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O'MEARA'S 
NAPOLEON IN EXILE ; 



on, A 



VOICE FROM ST. HELENA, 



From the Quarterly Review for February, 1822. 



:\EW-YORKt 

Printed and sold by T. & J. Swords, 
No. 99 Pearl-street. 



1823. 



m- 



ANSWER 



TO 



O'MEARA'S NAPOLEON IN EXILE. 



TN our former Numbers we apprized our readers 
-*- of the plan bj which Buonaparte designed to 
keep himself aUve in the pubhc recollection, and 
to maintain by successive publications the hopes of 
the disaffected throughout Europe ; and we exposed 
the art with which he contrived to have his agents 
successively dismissed from St. Helena, that they 
might, in due orderj contribute their respective 
quotas to the series of libels, by which the world 
was to be persuaded to tolerate the return of Buo- 
naparte himself. First came the fabricated Letters 
of that poor bungler Warden, reviewed in our Thir- 
ty-first Number: — then we had Signor Santini's 
Appeal to Europe ; and the Letter by Buonaparte 
himself, (under the name of Montholon.) reviewed 
in our Thirty-second Number. We then foretold 
» that Las Cases would be next sent home, with a 
crown of martyrdom on his head, and a budget of 
Buonapartiana at his back :' this accordingly hap- 
pened, and the result was, that worthy gentleman's 
• Leltr.rs from the Cape of Good Hope, wUh Extracts 
from the Great Work now compiling for publication 
imder the inspection of Napoleon*'' — Upon these let- 
ters we did ample justice in our Thirty-fourth Num- 
ber. Then came Mr. O'Meara, with the ' Ninth 



( 4 ) 

Chapter'^ of the aforesaid great zoork, viz. Buona- 
parte's Account of the Battle of Waterloo ; the dul- 
ness and follj of which were so contemptible, that 
neither we, nor, as far as we know, any body else, 
ever took the trouble of noticing its existence. This 
failure clogged for a while the efforts of the literary 
confederacy ; Las Cases and O'Meara, however, 
were working in silence at their journals, anxious, 
no doubt, to bring them out in due succession; 
when, alas ! the death of Buonaparte destroyed at 
once the order and object of the latter part of the 
march, and O'Meara, Las Cases, Gourgaud, and 
Montholon, had nothing left but — occupet extre- 
mum scabies ! — to rush to the press pele mele, and 
to endeavour, by rival puffs, to excite, each towards 
his own work, the public attention, and to draw, 
each to his own pocket, the public contribution. 

We shall, in a future Number, observe upon these 
volumes ; we have only affixed their names to this 
Article lest it should be thought that we evaded 
them, and in order to show the relative connexion 
of the whole series. Our present limits will not 
permit us to do more than to examine the work of 
O'Meara, which we are induced to undertake, part- 
ly from a desire of doing justice to those whom his 
work has assailed, but chiefly for the purpose of ap- 
plying to him and Buonaparte the spirit of the adage, 
• noscitur a socio,'^ and of showing the world what 
the cause must be of which O'Meara is the chosen 
advocate and champion. 

Mr. O'Meara had been, it seems, a surgeon in 
the army, and was dismissed from that service by 
sentence of a court-martial ; he then entered the 
naval service, into which, we presume, he must 
have procured his admission by a discreet silence 
as to his having ever belonged to the sister service. 
This suppression is remarkable, as showing that Mr, 



( s ) 

O'Meara, without being much of a scholar, disco- 
vered that, towards the accomphshment of a per- 
fect character, (which, in his way, Mr. O'Meara 
undoubtedly is,) it was necessary to observe the 
Horatian precept — 



servetup ad imum 



Qiialis ab incoepto processerit et sibi constet.* 

As he has not been as communicative as Las Cases 
in giving us an account of his early life, we only 
know that some time in 1812 or 1813 he was made, 
still in ignorance, we are willing to hope, of his ori- 
ginal mishap in the army, a full surgeon in the navy ; 
and, at Buonaparte's capture in 1815, he happened 
to be surgeon of the Bellerophon, in which the pri- 
soner was sent to England. We formerly observed, 
that it was curious Buonaparte could not induce one 
of his own medical men to follow him, and we attri- 
buted the fact to the disinclination of the members 
of an educated, enlightened, and independent pro- 
fession, to attach themselves to such a person ; but 
we now doubt the justice of this opinion. There 
must have been many persons of that profession not 
so scrupulous ; and we suspect that Buonaparte — 
who never was accused of a want of knowledge of 
a certain class of mankind, and who had a peculiar 
and congienial knack at discovering persons who 
were (it to be made his tools — soon saw that aa 
English surgeon, if he could so manage as to pro- 
cure one, might better answer all his present pur- 
poses, and promote his ulterior views ; a thought 
not improbably suggested to him by the just appre- 
« elation, which, on a slight acquaintance, he seems 
to have made of Mr. O'Meara.* However this may 

• It is curious, that the only three Britons (if ^they deserve 
that name) whom Buonaparte appears to have succeeded in 
cajoling, were the three naval surg-sons, Warden, O'Meara^ 
and Stokoe. 

a 2 



( 6 ) 

he, the French doctor Maingaud was dismissed at 
Plymouth ; and O'Meara — who does not appear to 
be even an M. D. — was appointed, (probably with- 
out much previous inquiry into his former history,) 
at Buonaparte's own request, his body physician. 

In this situation Mr. O'Meara continued from 
August, 1815, to April, 1818, when he was dismiss- 
ed from that duty, for — as we gather from his book 
—a series of misconduct, of which, indeed, almost 
every page affords pregnant instances ; and, on his 
return to England, having demanded an inquiry on 
his conduct, he was altogether dismissed from the 
naval service ; and it was then (for the first time, 
we hope) known that he had been already dismiss- 
ed from the army. His recall and last dismissal he 
attributes to the enmity of Sir Hudson Lowe, who 
had been appointed governor of St. Helena ducing 
the custody of Buonaparte ; and accordingly our 
readers must not be surprised to find that the great 
object of" his publication seems to be to cast every 
kind of ridicule and odium on that officer; whilst 
we are happy to be able to assert, boldly and con- 
scientiously, its effect must be, to show that Sir 
Hudson Lowe acted throughout the most trying 
and difficult situations, with temper, justice, inte- 
grity, and sagacity. Our readers know what tri- 
umphant answers we have already given to the 
calumnies of Santini, Monlholon, and Las Cases, 
against the governor; we now assure them, that 
Mr. O'Meara has only dressed up in a grosser, and 
to such a taste as his, in a more piquant manner, 
the crambe recocta of these refuted libellers. 

His work consists of two great branches, which, 
though twined together, are yet capable of being 
promptly distinguished : the first is, the charge and 
calumnies brought against Sir Hudson in O'Meara's 
proper person ; the secondj the charges and cakm- 



( 7 ) 

iiies against the governor, and the lies and libels on 
all subjects and against all men, which he puts into 
the mouth of Buonaparte. We shall examine these. 
in their order ; for it is evident, that O'JVIeara's cre- 
dit is the hinge upon which the whole discussion 
must turn, and if we do not deceive ourselves, we 
think that, after reading the following observations, 
no man, naj, no woman '^ alive will hesitate to say, 
that he is wholly discredited as a witness ; he him- 
self will be overwhelmed (if he be capable of the 
sensation) with shame, and those who have counte- 
nanced and encouraged him will be covered with 
ridicule. We doubt, whether the annals of literary 
criticism, nay, whether those of legal criticism, ex- 
hibit so decisive an exposure as that we are now 
about to inflict on this unfortunate person. 

We must begin by apprizing our readers of the 
course we mean to pursue in unravelling the im- 
mense and complicated tissue of calumny and false- 
hood which occupy two thick octavo volumes. 
There is not, we believe, a single page in which 
we could not detect errors of one class or (he 
other; some pages are crowded with them: a de- 
tailed examination would, therefore, occupy at least 
as many volumes as the original, and, however com- 
plete the refutation might be, would weary and per- 
plex the most patient reader. We must necessarily, 
therefore, apply ourselves to the chief and mo^t 
prominent subjects of which the Journal is com- 
posed ; — such as ' Sir Hudson Lowe's folly and in- 
capacity ; his rigorous and insulting treatment of 

• * O'Meara's work,' say our Northern brethren, (with that 
delicate tact which disting-uishes all their compliments,) « is 
dedicated, with peculiar propriety, to Lady Holland, whose 
kindness to Napoleon in his day of need, so unlike the frivolity 
and fickleness of her sex anclstatiorif reflect (reflects) upon her 
vhe most lasting honour.' 



( 3 ) 

Buonaparte personally ; his spiteful vigilance to 
prevent the prisoners enjoying the most innocent 
pleasures of society ; his petty vexations and op- 
pression in refusing them the perusal of newspapers, 
and his neglect or cruelty in depriving them of the 
common necessaries of life ; his endeavour to se- 
duce Mr. O'Meara to become a spy on his patients 
and his unrelenting persecution of this worthy man 
till he succeeded in having him — merely because 
he had the integrity to resist his seductions — dis- 
missed from the island.' 

Such are the charges which it is the first object of 
this book to substantiate ; — such are the charges 
which we have to examine ;— and such are the char- 
ges which we pledge ourselves to prove, not only to 
he false, but not even to have a colour or a pretence. 
And in order that the refutation may be as satisfac- 
tory in point of evidence, as it will be complete in 
effect, we further pledge ourselves not to make use 
of a single fact or argument that we do not obtain 
from the mouth of O'Meara himself. 

The last of the above charges, — namely, what 
relates to his dismissal from the island, — we shall 
notice first, because, although of the least import- 
ance in itself, it will open to the reader a very use- 
ful view of O'Meara's character, and indeed of the 
whole object of his book. 

Our readers are well aware, that the vital import- 
ance attached to Buonaparte's safe custody, and 
the recollection of the escape from Elba, induced 
the legislature to pass an act to make penal any 
secret intercourse with Buonaparte. The orders 
of government, confirmed by this act, required that 
all communications with him or his followers were 
to be with the sanction of the governor; and, in pur- 
suance of the authority vested in him, several regu- 
Jations were estabUshed for conducting the inter- 



( 9 ) 

course, written or personal, between the detenus, 
and all other persons. These regulations were 
originally established by Sir George Cockburn, who 
preceded Sir Hudson Lowe in the awful responsi- 
bility of the custody of one who had nothing to lose 
and every thing to gain by an attempt to escape, — 
who had talent and audacity to invent the best plans 
for such an object, — who had partizans all over the 
world, able, active, and desperate, — who had him- 
self an unbounded command of money, and whose 
nearest relations, scattered over the face of Europe 
and America, had wealth and station to further all 
their designs, — and who, finally, by what we always 
thought a false policy, was a kind of prisoner at 
large, with a retinue of devoted partizans, and with 
full leisure and opportunity to combine and arrange 
any plans of escape which might be in agitation. 
Under such circumstances no regulations would have 
been too vigilant or too jealous. Those adopted 
by Sir George Cockburn and Sir Hudson Lowe ap- 
pear to us to have been perhaps more moderate and 
indulgent, and less jealous, than a strict considera- 
tion of the cause would have justified : — but that is 
not the question now. These regulations, such as 
they were, Buonaparte took, from the first hour, in 
high dudgeon, and violently, and on every occasion, 
great and little, thwarted and opposed. He had pro- 
bably three powerful motives for this opposition:— 
1. that the regulations denied to him the imperial 
character^ to which personal vanity for the present, 
and political hopes for the future, induced him to 
cling, as the drowning sailor does to a plank; — 2. 
that the regulations, if they did not render escape 
impossible, made it at least diflicult ; — 3. that by 
continued complaints against i-maginary vexations 
and oppressions, a degree of commiseration and 
svmpathy might be created in the public mind, which 



( 10 ) 

might eventually lead to his removal to a situation 
more convenient for his ulterior objects. A man 
of true dignity of mind in Buonaparte's situation 
would have submitted to these regulations- — even 
if they bad been unjust and oppressive, — nay, the 
rather, because they were unjust and oppressive, — 
with a calm contempt, and that resignation under 
such reverses, which is the true mark of a noble 
soul. Instead of which, we find him kicking like a 
froward child; scolding with all the violence and 
grossness of Billingsgate; and playing off every kind 
of evasive trick and subterfuge, hke the clown of a 
pantomime. In this petty warfare against the re- 
gulations, his immediate followers naturally formed 
his chief dependance : but he soon found, as we shall 
see, a zealous auxiliary in O'Meara. — When the 
surgeon began, and hoiv fur he went in the violation 
of the laws and regulations, it is impossble for any 
one but himself to say ; but we shall rest the whole 
of this part of the case on one instance, which was 
discovered by an extraordinary accident, 

O'Meara's dismissal from St. Helena was sudden, 
and earlier than bis or Buonaparte's secret corres- 
pondents in Europe expected. A. short time after 
bis departure, a ship arrived from England, having 
on board a box of French books verbally stated to 
be for O'Meara, and a letter addressed to a Mr. 
Fowler, the partner of Balcombe, Buonaparte's pur- 
veyor. Mr. Fowler, on opening the cover, found 
that it contained nothing but an enclosure addressed 
to James Forbes, esq. As he knew no James Forbes, 
he thought it his duty to carry the letter to the Go- 
vernor; further inquiries ascertained that there was 
no personof the nameof James Forbeson the island; 
and accordingly it was thought proper to open this 
mysterious letter before the Governor and Council, 
when it was found to begin with the words « Dear 



{ »l ) 

O^Meara;^ it is dated Lyon's Inn, London, and U 
signed ' William Holmes.'^ We find, in vol. i. p. 1 2^ 
a confession of O'Meara's, which implicates him in 
the whole affair, and proves that the letter was on 
the business of Buonaparte: namely, that '^ Mr, 
Holmes^ of Lyori^s Inn^ was Jiapoleon^s Agent in 
London, and that O'Meara kept up, — by means of 
a friend on board one of the King's ships in the 
roads, — a communication with this Agent of Buo- 
naparte,'^ If all had been of the most innocent and 
indifferent kind, it must be admitted that the very 
fact of such communications — secret communica- 
tions between the confidential attendant of Buona- 
parte at St, Helena and his agent in London — was 
highly improper, and of itself required the removal 
ofO'Meara; but what will our readers say, when 
they see the nature of them ? 

< Dear O'Meara, June 26, 1818. 

* I have at length seen Mr. (a person lately come 

from St. Helena,) who I am sure will exert himself much 
for his friends at St. Helena. His stay in London will be 
about a fortnight, most of which time he will remain at 
my house. The letter you gave him for me, he left at 
Ascension Island, to be forwarded; so that, 1 know not 
your instructions. He did think of going to the continent 
for the benefit of his wife's health, but is fearful of impro- 
per motives being ascribed to the taking the journey, and 
particularly as the tongue of slander has already been busy 
with his name. I told him, that, if business* had any 
thing to do with the object of his journey, I would be hap- 
py to go in his place; but, he says, he has only one com- 
mission to execute at Paris, which is so unimportant, that 
he would not trouble me ; and that, indeed, his name be- 
ing mentioned, he thought I could not effect it. If, there- 
fore, you are aware of the nature of the commission, and 

* This word is double-underlined in the original 



( 18 ) 

tliat it is necessary still to execute it. you fiad better get 
ME AUTHORIZED to transdct the business. 

* I expect to hear from my friends at Rome and Munich^ 
of which you shall have due information.' 

Our readers know, that at Munich resided his 
Imperial Highness Prince Eugene Napoleon, and 
at Rome Cardinal Fesch and the princesses of the 
imperial family/. Before this letter was despatched, 
O'Meara's own letter, which had been left at Ascen- 
sion, reached the hands of Buonaparte's agent, who 
thereupon adds a postscript, from which we may- 
judge of the nature of O'Meara's instructions, 

* I continue the duplicate, to say, that the letter from 

Ascension Island, left by , is just come to hand. All 

the parcels sent in July last, by Mr. J. are safe; since 
which, iwo have been left by some unknown hand ; one 
brought by B. and two by B. This is the sum total of my 
receipts, except your letters of the 17th and 31st March, 
and 2d April. 

* I intend starting for Paris next week, to see Lafitte ; 
and, perhaps, will see Las Cases ; but I fear my journey 
will be useless, from the insufficiency of the documents I 
hold. 

* Seek evefy opportunity of writing me, and sending 
wJiat you can. S. and P. refused to pay Gourgaud's bill 
for <£500, but they have since heard from Las Cases, and 
it is settled. 1 understand the old general does not mean 
to publish ; but should he, Perry^ of the Cht^onicle, has 
promised his assistance. 

* I understand you are to draw for ,£l,80Q. You shall 
hear the issue of my visit to Lafitte ; and, if your re- 
mittances are paid, trade of that kind can be carried on 

to ANY EXTENT. 

(Signed) ^ W. Holmes.' 

The friend on board the King's ship in the roads 
was, we suppose, the surgeon Stokoe, whom 
O'Meara had probably initiated into these prac- 



( 13 ) 

tices, to supply his place when he should be sent 
away. Stokoe was also dismissed from the service, 
we suppose, on the discovery that Holmes had en- 
deavoured to transmit secretly through him, ' in 
case O'Meara should have left St. Helena,' a com- 
munication to General Bertrand, 

< 3, Lyon's-Inn, Strand, London, 
^ Dear Sir, August 26, 1 8 1 8. 

*If my friend and client O'lMeara has left, oblige me by 
giving the enclosed to Count Bertrand in private, for al- 
though it is not of much importance, I nevertheless do not 
wish the Governor to peruse it ; have the goodness also to 
give my address, and desire a7ii/ letters to be sent to my 
office. * I am, &c. 

(Signed) 'W.Holmes.' 

(Letter enclosed in the ahove without address.) 

^London, August 25, 1818. 
* Reply to Letter addressed to Paris : 
*The 100,000 francs lent in 1816 are paid; likewise 
the 72,000 francs, which complete the 395,000 francs 
mentioned in the note of the 15th of March. The 36,000* 
francs for 1817? and the like sum for 1819, have also been 
paid by the person ordered. 

* Remain quiet as to the funds placed ; the farmers are 
good, and they will pay bills for the amount of the in- 
come, which must be calculated at the rate of four per 
cent, commencing from 181 6, that is to say, there will be 
three years of the interest due the expiration of the present 
year. 

* All other letters have been delivered.' 

We shall not insuU the understanding of our 
readers by any comments on these letters; we will 
only remind them, that it has since appeared, by 

* If this sum of 36,000 francs was, as it appears to have been, 
interest money, it would, at four per cent, which we see was the 
rate the 'farmer* paid, prove a capital in the hands of one per ton 
aloite of 900,000 francs. 

B 



( 14 ) 

legal proceedings in France, that the house of La- 
Utte had in its possession, at this period, an immense 
sum of money belonging to Buonaparte. It will 
also be observed, that O'Meara, whose salary ap- 
pears to have been undtr £500 per annum, was to 
draw, in one sum, for £1800 ! We believe we shall 
hear no more of the injustice of removing Mr. 
O'Meara from about Buonaparte ; and we hope that 
the world will appreciate the credit to be given to 
so candid and disinterested a Witness, 

We shall next proceed to observe upon a most 
extraordinary and important transaction^ which, al- 
though it has made a considerable noise in every 
part of Europe, and been connected with the most 
serious personal consequences to Mr.O'Meara him- 
self — he has not chosen to mention in these vo- 
lumes ; we mean his charge against Sir Hudson 
Lowe, of having endeavoured to induce him, while 
medically attending Buonaparte, to poison his pa- 
tient. Our blood runs cold while we write such 
a charge — but horror changes to indignation when 
we recollect that it is made against an English sol- 
dier, an English gentleman, and that there are 
wretches who pretend to the name of Britons, who 
seem to countenance the accuser. Mr. O'Meara 
iias been so discreetly silent on this point, that all 
that we know of this charge, and its consequences, 
is contained in the fact of his dismissal (to w^hich 
we alluded above) from his Majesty's service, and 
the following letter from the Secretary' of the Ad- 
. miralty to Mr. O'Meara, announcing that dismissal. 
We have not been able to ascertain, nor do we 
know, how this letter got into the public papers ; 
but it bears all the marks of official authority, and 
has never, that we know of, been denied or ques- 
tioned ; we therefore conclude it to be authentic. 



( ^^ ) 

COPY of tho Official Letter icliich notified to Mr, 

O^Meara his Removal from the Situation of a Surgeon 

in the Navy. 

< Admiralty Office, Nov. 2, 1818. 

' SIR — I HAVE received, and laid before my Lord's 
Commissioners of tlie Admiralty, your letter (and its en- 
closure) of the 28lh ult. in which you state several particu- 
lars of your conduct in the situation you lately held at St. 
Helena, and retjuest, "that their Lordships would, as soon 
as their important duties should allow, communicate to 
you their judgment thereupon.'' 

' Their Lordships have lost no time in considering your 
statement, and they command me to inform you, that 
(even without reference to the complaints made against 
3'ou by Lieut. General Sir H. Lowe) they find in your 
own admissions ample grounds for marking your proceed- 
ings with their severest displeasure. 

^ But there is one passage in your said letter of such a 
nature as to supersede the necessity of animadverting upon 
any other part of it. 

*This passage is as follows: — ^•In the inlru inirtv'i^vr 
" which Sir Hudson Lowe had with Napoleon Buonaparte 
" in the month of May, 1816, he proposed to the latter to 
*' send me away, and to replace me by Mr. Baxter, who 
" had been several years surgeon in the Corsican Rangers. 
" This proposition was rejected with indignation by Na- 
" poleon Buonaparte, upon the grounds of the indelicacy 
" of a proposal to substitute an army surgeon for the pri- 
^' vate surgeon of his own choice. Failing in this attempt, 
*"' Sir Hudson Lowe adopted the resolution of manifesting 
" great confidence in me, by loading me with civilities, in- 
" viting me constantly to dinner with him, conversing, for 
" hours together, with me alone, both in his own house 
*' and grounds, and at Longwood, either in my own roora, 
^' or under the trees and elsewhere. On some of these oc- 
" casions he made to me observations upon the benefit 
'^ which would result to Europe from the death of Napo- 
^* leon Buonaparte, of which event he spoke in a raan- 
" ner which, considering his situation and mine, was pe 
^•' culiarly distressing to me." 



( 16 ) 

* It is ifflpossibie to doubt the meaning which this pas- 
sage was intended to convey, and my Lords can as little 
doubt that the insinuation is a calumnious falsehood ; but 
if it were true, and if so horrible a suggestion were made to 
you, directly or indirectly, it was your bountien duty not 
to have lost a moment in communicating it to the Admiral 
on the spot, or to the Secretary of State, or to their Lord- 
ships. 

' An overture so monstrous in itself, and so deeply in- 
volving, not merely the personal character of the Gover- 
nor, but the honour of the nation, and the important in- 
terest committed to his charge, should not have been re- 
served in your own breast for two years, to be produced 
at last, not (as it would appear) from a sense of public 
cfuty, but in furtherance of your personal hostility against 
iha Governor. 

' Either the charge is in the last degree false and ca- 
lumnious^ or you can have no possible excuse for having 
hitherto suppressed it. 

* In either case, and without adverting to the general 
tenor of your conduct, as stated in your letter, my Lords 
consider you to be an improper person to continue in his 
Majesty's service, and they have directed your name to be 
erased from the list of Naval Surgeons accordingly. 

(Signed) J. W. Crokee.' 
' Mr. O'Meara, 
* 28, Chester Place, Kennington.^ 

To this letter, or to the cause of his dismissal from 
the naval service, Mr. O'Meara has never made 
(that vfQ can learn) any allusion. We are not 
much surprised at this ; Mr. Croker's letter is un- 
answerable; that quality of a dilemma which is po- 
pularly explained by the metaphor of horns, was 
never better exemphfied, and Mr. O'Meara has no 
alternative, but to choose on which horn he wili 
impale himself and his character. He either re- 
ceived, and for two years concealed, and at last 
discloses, only out of personal pique, a nefarious 



( 17 ) 

proposition for a medical murder, or else his charge 
is 'a calumnious falsehood,'' 

We now proceed to another topic. There is no 
proof of Sir Hudson's 'paltry and vexatious tem- 
per,' to which O'Meara more frequently reverts, 
than his anxiety to prevent Buonaparte's receiving 
newspapers. He does not choose to tell, a well 
known fact, that newspapers (quite innocently, on 
the part of their editors) were made a channel of 
secret communication with Buonaparte — a cypher 
was established, by which, what appeared only an 
ordinary advertisement, conveyed information ta 
Longwood from his partizans in Europe. He does 
not choose to tell that the French at St. Helena di- 
rected their secret correspondents in London, to 
employ this mode of communication^ How far it 
may have been pushed, never can be discovered; 
but the facts are certain, and woiild have justified 
a much greater degree of anxiety than Sir Hudson 
showed ; for in truth it seems that he showed sa 
little, that Buonaparte received a great variety of* 
papers, and that Sir Hudson had the attention to- 
forward him regular files, we believe, of both the 
Times and Courier. But we have pledged our- 
selves not to rest any thing on our own credit, we 
shall therefore astonish our readers by another 
proof of O'JVIeara's folly and duplicity. In every 
part of his book, he dwells on. the di/iiculty which 
Buonapate had to get newspapers, and complains 
that he could only obtain now and then a {e\\ bro- 
ken numbers which he (O'Meara) procured for him, 
and for which little attention he was severely chid 
by the Governor; at last he sums up the whole 
Into one grand charge : — 

< NO newspapers or periodical publications ever reach- 
ed Longwood, during my residence there, except some ?/«- 
OQunected numbers of the Times, Courier, Observer, &c 

b 2 



( 18 ) ' 

with SI few straggling French newspapers of verj old date 
In one instance, in Marchj 18l7j I think, the Governor 
permitted me to take the Morning Chronicle of same weeks^ 
as a great favour, which was not again repeated.' — vol. ii. 
p. 397. 

Now unfortunately for Mr. O'Meara, the folloW'* 
ing letter, addressed by him to Sir Hudson Lowe, 
and dated 20th June, 1817, has been preserved :— 

« Sif^ * Longwood, 20th June, 1817. 

'In reply to your inquiries to be informed of the name 
of such newspapers as General Buonaparte may have re- 
ceived, 1 have the honour to inform you that the following 
are the only ones which (to my knowledge) have ever 
reached him, viz. London papers, the Courier, Times^ 
^tar, Observer, Bell's Weekly Messenger, and the St. 
James's or Englishman's Chronicle, (a paper published 
twice a week) ; provincial papers, the Hampshire Tele- 
graph, the Hampshire Courier, and the Macclesfield paper. 

* Of the above mentioned papers, by far the greatest 
number have been the Times, Courier, Star, and the 
Hampshire Telegraph. Of the Observer, not more than 
three or four numbers; probably as many of the^t. James's 
Chronicle and Bell's Messenger ; of the Hampshire Cou- 
rier, probably eight or nine. On one occasion, I recollect 
that amongst a Jile of Couriers given by Sir Thomas 
Read there was one number of the Globe, and one or two 
of the Traveller. 

' These, with the usual series of papers sent by your- 
self, some French papers and Morning Chronicle for Oc- 
iober, November, and part of December, also sent by your- 
self, form the whole of the newspapers he has received. 
(Signed) * Barry E. O'Meara.' 

It is impossible to have a more complete contra- 
diction, in terms and substance, than is here exhi- 
bited: the 'unconnected numbers' of the book are 
described in the letter, as ' files' and ' usual se- 
ries ;' and the 'Morning Chronicle of some weeks,' 
which O'Meara ' was permitted, as a great favour/ 



( J9 ) 

to borrow, turns out to have been a regular sener 
for nearly three months, sent to Buonaparte by Sir 
Hudson himself. 

The next proof of O'Meara's malice against Sir 
Hudson, and of the restless asperity with which he 
attacks his character on all points and on every sub- 
ject, is an episode, occupying thirty-four tiresome 
pages, (vol. ii. 300 — 334), and only introduced to 
show that, when he commanded in the Island of 
Capri, in the year 1808, he became the egregious 
dupe of an Italian spy named Suzzarelli. The story 
is altogether dull and uninteresting, and would be 
wholly unworthy of notice but for one or two little 
circumstances which connect themselves with it. 
Its object is to corroborate the interminable charges 
of gross and contemptible incapacibj brought against 
Sir Hudson. O'Meara's praise and O'Meara's cen- 
sure are of about equal value ; but it is amusing to 
tind him, in a letter now before us, (dated 6th Aug. 
1816,) addressing this 'poor,'^ ' stupid,'^ '•incapable,'^ 
Governor, in the following terms : — ' It is unneces- 
sary for me, Sir, to point out to an officer of your 
discrimination, talents and observation,' <Sic. <SiC. 

The affair is of such little importance, that we 
need not detail the internal evidence which throws 
discredit over the whole statement ; we shall only 
4iotice the source whence iMr. O'Meara obtained 

if. ♦ 

Cipriani, maUre d^hotel (o Buonaparte, who, 6y 
his 7naster's orders, told O'Meara the story, had for- 
merly been in the service of the noted Saiiceti, and 
was the very person who seduced Suzzarelli from 
his fidelity ; and his conduct in the affair was such, 
that, as Mr.O'Meara with great simplicity confesses, 
he had, in consequence, dropped his real name of 
Franceschi, and called himself Cipriani. To dis- 
i'.uss the evidence of a fellow-— so infamous, .even 



( 20 > 

in his own opinion, as to be obliged to change his 
wame— would be idle ; but even if we w ere inclined 
to give credit to Cipriani, it does not follow that 
O'Meara's story fs true, because it is very observ- 
able that, although the facts did not relate to Buo- 
naparte — although no professional delicacy could 
have required their suppression — although the duty 
of an English officer required that such a system of 
deception should not have been concealed — 
O'Meara never gives any hint to the Governor or 
the government, nay, never opens his mouth on 
the subject till after the death of Cipriani ! 

But suppose the whole story had been true, what 
would it amount to ? That Suzzarelli was a double 
jspy, and took money and gave information on both 
sides. To fall in with a spy of this character is not, 
we believe, very extraordinary ; the generahty of 
spies in all ages have, we apprehend, been subject 
to the same imputations, and even the two best 
judges in the world, — General Buonaparte and Mr, 
O'Meara, are themselves exactly of our opinion, and 
consider it no disgrace in any man — excepting 
always Sir Hudson Lowe — to have employed a 
double spy* 

* '*' My poUce,'^ says Buonaparte, " had in pay many 
'English spies ; some of high quality, among whom were 
many Ladies ! There was one Lady in partrcular, of 
very high rank, who furnished considerable information, 
and was sometimes paid so highas<£3,000 in one month." 
— " They came over," continued Buonaparte, " in boats 
not broader than this bath ; it was really astonishing to see 
them passing your 74 gun ships in defiance." — I (O'Meara) 
observed that they were double spies, and that they 
brought intelligence from France to the British government 
— " that «s very likely ^^ replied Napoleon F- — vol. i. p. 
252. 

We are greatly mistaken if our readers do not 



( i'l ) 

consiucr lliis extract as highlv comic, in exhibiting 
— lirst, O'Meara describing Buonaparte as adnnit- 
ting the same liind of credulity and irnbecihty (but 
in an extravagant degree) for whicli they affect to 
despise Sir Hudson Lowe ; — secondly, poor Buo- 
iiaparte so egregiously duped as to pay £3000 a 
month, on the supposition that he was bribing an 
English Larhf of very high rank j — thirdly, his be- 
lieving that in our government women are intrust- 
ed with the secrets of state, and that Lady Grey or 
Mrs. Perceval sat in the cabinet on the Bjenos 
Ayres or VValcheren expeditions : — Iburthly, iliat 
these English spies, Ladies of very high rank in- 
eluded, crossed the channel in boats no bigger than 
a bath ; — and, lastly, that these boats passed be- 
tween Dover and Dunkirk, in defiance of the 74 
gun ships, which tlie Enghsh Admiralty had so ju- 
diciously stationed to intercept this species of in- 
tercourse I 

Can absurdity go beyond this ? We might be for- 
given if we stopped here, and rested our judgment 
of the whole book on this single specimen ; which, 
our readers see, was not selected for its own espe- 
cial qualities, but incidentally met with while we 
were following another topic. 

Our next observation relates to the statement of 
O'Meara, so often repeated, that Sir Hudson f^owe 
endeavoured to induce him to act as a spy on Buo- 
naparte. This slander, we might perhaps content 
our-elves by indignantly denying, as we have done 
the proposition of the poison, but some little cir- 
cumstances require (for O'Meara's sake) further 
eluv'idation. Who first suggested the suspicion of 
Sir Hudson being likely to employ a spy ? — Buona- 
parte. And wheji ? — Before Sir Hudson Lowe had 
been a fortnight on the island ! Sir Hudson Lowe 
landed on the 1 5th April ; on the 17th he was in- 



( 25 ) 

troduced to Buonaparte. It does not appear that 
Sir Hudson had seen him more than twice or tbrice, 
nor is it stated that O'Meara had ever had any con- 
versation with the Governor, when, on the 5th 
May— 

* Napoleon sent Marchand (his valet de chsmbre) foF 
me at nine o'clock. I was introduced by the back door 
into his-bed room ; after a {q\v questions ofno importance, 
he asked, both in French and Itahan^ in ih^ presence of 
Count Las Cases^ the following questions : " yon know 
that it was in consequence of my appUcation, that yon 
were appointed to attend on me ; now, I want to know 
from you precisely^and as a man of honour, in what situa- 
tion you conceive yourself to be ; whether as my surgeon, 
as M. Maingaad was, or the surgeon of a prison-ship or 
prisoners? whether you have orders to report every 
trifling occurrence or illness, or what I say to you, to the 
Governor? answer me, what situation do you conceive 
yourself to be in? tell me candidly.' — vol. i. p. 42. 

To this interrogatory O'Meara, who had not yet 
been quite initiated into the system of intended 
fraud and calumny, answered fairly and truly — 

* As your surgeon, to attend upon you and your suite. 
I have received no other orders than to make an imme- 
diate report, in case of your being seriously taken ill, m 
order to have promptly the advice and assistance of other 
physicians.' — vol. i. p. 43. 

In spite of this decisive answer, Buonaparte ^oes 
on, with the most determined resolution, to fix on 
Sir Hudson the character of a spy, 

* If,' said he, ' you were appointed as surgeon to a 
prison, and to report my conversations to the Governor, 
vjhom I take to be " un capo di spioni," (a director of 
spies) I would never see you more.' — vol. i. p. 43. 

Thus then, though O'Meara has given the most 
decisive negative to such a suspicion, Buonaparte 
avows, without a shadow of reason, that he takes 



( 23 ) 

the Governor to be, what he calls a direcior of 
^pies^ And the Italian phrase is still more contemp- 
tuous. 

But this is not all. It appears hy the further 
course of the conversation, that Buonaparte had 
previously insulted Sir Hudson to his face, by simi- 
lar, and even worse imputations. 

* This Governor, during the few days that I was melan- 
choly, and had a mental affliction from the treatment I re- 
ceived — (this could not have alluded to any measures of 
Sir Hudson Lowe's, who had been but a very few days on 
the island) — ^^wanted to send his physician to me, under 
the pretext of inquiring after m3' health. I desired Ber- 
trand to tell him, that I had not sufficient conjidence in his 
physician to take any tuing from his hands.' — vol. i, 
p. 44. 

But lest this insinuaiion should not be sufficiently 
■strong against two officers, one of whom he never 
saw at a!l, the other but twice, and neither of whom 
at this period had been ten days on the island, he 
proceeds to make an almost direct charge of an in- 
tention to murder hinfio 

^ I am convinced that this governor has been sent out 

by Lord . I told him a few days ago, that if he 

wanted to put an end to ?ne, he would have a very good 
opportunity, by sending somebody to force his way into 
my chamber ; that I would immediately make a corpse of 
the first that entered, and then I should be of course des- 
patched, and he might write home to his government, 
that " Buonaparte was killed in a brawl." ' — vol. i. p. 45. 

We entreat our readers to recollect that these 
outrages took place in the very first days of Sir 
Hudson's government, and before Buonaparte could 
bave received the slightest personal provocation, 
and at a time when even O-Meara admits that Buo- 
naparte's charges of espionage were wholly false ; 



( 24 ) 

affd we, Iherefore, leave the world to judge of the 
troth of the same brutal charges, made in the same 
brutal way, every day and every hour, till Buona- 
parte's death; sureiy the admitted calumny and 
falsehood of the outset are enough to throw dis- 
grace and discredit upon all the Siibsequent repeti- 
tions. 

But we shall not rest S,ir Hudson's defence on 
SLny inference, however just — we shall not be con- 
tented with contradicting O'Meara out of any mouth 
but Au own, Buonaparte's pretence for all this in- 
sulting language was, it seems, a proposition, that 
some English officer should, once a-day, ascertain 
that he was at Longwood, — a simple, necessary^ 
atid hy no means offensive precaution ; and on this, 
and this alone, is founded the charge of the Gover- 
nor's being a spy and an assas^m^ 

Had the regulation been the most offensive pro- 
ceeding possible, it was not Sir Hudson Lowe'^s,-^ 
he found it already established by SirGeorge Cock- 
burn ; and it is very remarkable that O'Meara states 
the establishment of these regulations by Sir George, 
ill language of approt)atio-n, (1 — 13 — 22) whilst the 
iTiaintenance of them by Sir Hudson Lowe, who had 
not been ten days on the island, is made the excuse 
of these outrageous insults which O'Meara records, 
and subsequently enforces with so much anxiety and 
zeal. We attach the more importance to the detec- 
tion of both Buonaparte and O'Meara upon this 
point, because the regulations in question are the 
subject upon which the complaints are most vio- 
lent ; and the vehemence with which Buonaparte 
and his partizans objected to these precautions 
proves the policy of establishing them. Jf Buona- 
parte had no intention to attempt his escape, what 
object oould he have had in conceahng himself for 
weeks together from those who were responsible 



Hiiii 



( 25 ) 

for his sale custodj ? and by what ot'lier mode (ex 
cept actual imprisonment) could the persons charg- 
ed with this heavy responsibihty assure themselves 
of his presence ? 

The foregoing conversation about spies between 
Buonaparte and O'Meara took place on the jth 
May, 1816. But on the 23d December, 1817, 
O'Meara, who had by this time quite thrown off the 
mask, writes a most insolent letter to Sir Hudson 
Lowe, accusing the Governor of having attempted 
to seduce him, to become a spy on his patient. 
This letter was sent by O'Meara to England, and 
soon appeared in the Morning Chronicle. To ma- 
lign Sir Hudson Lowe was, no doubt, the object — 
but w^e shall now show, by a series of extraordinary 
facts connected with this letter, that 



even-handed justice 



Commends the ingredients of his poisoned chalice 
To his own lips ? 

if we had no other evidence it would be sufficient 
to overwhelm the writer. 

The letter is dated Longwood, the 23c? December, 
18 J 7, and its first sentence is as follows : 

' Sir — In consequence of some circumstances whick 
have latterly occurred relative to the obligations expected 
from a person filling the situation I liave the honour to 
hold, I conceive it to be essentially necessary to lay the 
following statement before your Excellency.' 

The statement which follows, is all on the subject 
of the alleged attempt of Sir H. Lowe to seduce 
O'Meara to be a spy. Now O'Meara begins by ad- 
mitting that these attempts were made latterly ; and 
no doubt can be entertained, considering the virtu- 
ous indignation expressed against espionage^ that, 
had they been made earlier^ they would have beeft 
earlier exposed 5 nor would this modern Fabricius 

C 



( 26 ) 

have gone on for nearly two years holding, not 
merely friendly, but, as we shall see presently, con» 
fidential intercourse, with so base a person as Sir 
Hudson would have been, had he made the alleged 
propositions. We have a right, therefore, to con* 
elude, that these ' attempts' ' occurred' not long 
before the 23d December, 1817. His work, which 
is in form of a journal (both volumes), contains 929 
pages ; the 23d December falls on the 858th page; 
so that it is about this place, namely, towards the 
end o( the /asf volume, that we ought to findO'Meara 
beginning his complaints against Sir Hudson's espi- 
^onage^ but, on the contrary, from the very first 
page in which the Governor's name is mentioned 
through the 858 following pages, there is hardly 
one which is not filled with allusions, insinuations, 
or downright charges on this point ; if, therefore, 
the letter speak truths, the book is false, and, vice 
versa. But this is not all.- — About December, 1817, 
Sir Hudson persecutes O'Meara to become a spy j 
yet O'Meara tells us in his book, that so long before 
as August, the Governor gave him a most unjust 
and despotic order not to hold any conversation 
with Buonaparte, except on medical subjects. What 
more decisive proof could Sir Hudson adduce of his 
innocence, than his repeated commands to O'Meara, 
not to communicate with Buonaparte upon any of 
those subjects which alone could interest a spy ? 

The letter, after the introductory sentence which 
we have quoted, proceeds to give Sir Hudson an 
account of the before-mentioned conversation of 
Buonaparte and O'Meara, on the 5th May, 1816; 
and, unhappily for Mr. O'Meara's credit, the ac- 
count given in the letter, and that given in the 
b.ook, are essentially different— Sind the cause of the 
difference is infamous. 

^ When asked by Napoleon Buonaparte to tell him can- 



mmm 



( 27 ) 

didly whether he ought to consider me as a surgeon d*un 
GalerCf or as a medical man in whom he could repose 
confidence, I repUed, that I was not a surgeon (Pun Ga* 
lere ; that I was a surgeon and not a spy, and one in 
whom I hoped he might place confidence — that my prin- 
ciples WERE TO FORGET THE CONVERSATIONS I HAD WITH 

MY PATIENTS ON LEAVING THE ROOM, unlcss as far as re- 
garded my allegiance as a British officer to my Sovereign 
and country — and that my orders only obliged me to one 
thing, viz. to give immediate notice to the Governor in 
case of any serious illness befalling him, in order that the 
best medical advice might be promptly aflbrded.' — Letter 
o/23dDec. 18ir. 

Our readers will sec, that in the journal, which, 
written at the moment, ought to have been more 
fall and detailed than the letter written eii^hteen 
months after, there is no trace of these remarkable 
words — Thai my principles were to forget the. cou" 
versalions I had with my patients on having the 
room ! 

Why was this important omission made in the 
journal ? — because every line of the journal gives 
the letter the lie — because the preface to the jour- 
nal, in recommending its authenticity to the reader, 
states that — 

' Immediately on retiring from Napoleon's presence I 
hurried to my chamber, and carefully committed to paper 
the topics of the conversation, with, so far as I could, the 
exact words used !' — Pref. vol. i. p. xi. 

The baseness of such an act is scarcely surpassed 
by the folly of such a confession ! but even this is 
not all. In several places of the book O'Meara 
boasts that he communicated these conversations 
to official persons in England: not content with 
this, the moment the nnhappy patient has expired, 
the moment he can no longer deny or explain the 
abominations imputed to kim, the faithful physician 



( 28 ) 

— ^ whose principle it is to forget the conversations 
he had with his patients, on leaving the room'— 
hurries to sell the hoarded scandal, and exposes to 
all mankind the conversations which had been con- 
Uded to the private ear of friendship. We should 
be at a loss for language to express our sense of 
such conduct, but we fortunately find it already 
done by Mr. O'Meara himself, in another passage 
of this extraordinary letter : — 

* He who, clothed with the specious garb of a physician, 
insinuates himself into the confidence of his patient, and 
avails himself of the frequent opportunities and facilities 
which his situation necessarily presents of beiwg near his 
person, to wring (under pretence of curing or alleviating 
his infirmities, and in that confidence which has been from 
*ime immemorial reposed by the sick in persons professing 
the healing art) disclosures of his patients sentiments and 
opinions for the purpose of afterwards betraying them^ 
deserves most justly to be branded with the appellation of 
^^ mouton^^-—{a. wretch more infamous even than a spy.') 
--Letter qf23d Dec. I817, 

To what we had said we have one damning fact 
to add. This letter was published in the Morning 
Chronicle, as part of a ^complete series' of corres- 
pondence between the Governor and Mr. O'Meara, 
which the friends of the latter thought it necessary 
to his reputation to lay before the public. Will our 
readers believe— that the principal and most import- 
ant letter of the whole series, namely, a long and 
able answer from Sir Thomas Read, by command 
of Sir Hudson Lowe, to the letter of the 23d De- 
cember, was who-lly suppressed ; — and suppressed, 
Bot by accident or neglect, but purposely, fraudu- 
lently ; for in its place was printed another letter of 
Sir Thomas Read's, written some months after, on 
a different point, and having no kind of reference 
tQ the letter of the 23d December ; though the sub» 



( 29 ) 

stitution is so managed, that what is thus introduced 
looks as if it had been written in consequence of 
the letter to which it is thus insidiously appended. 

The suppressed letter is a most clear, temperate, 
and conclusive refutation of all O'Meara's false- 
hoods and pretences, and might very properly find 
a place here ; — but we have engaged to make 
O'^Meara refute himself and to convict him by his 
own confessions ; and we are now about to produce 
another batch of his letters, which, we are confi- 
dent, will surpass any expectation that can have 
been formed of the man's baseness and folly. 

Mr. O'Meara may, perhaps, affect to see some 
difference between being a spy for the Governor, 
and a spy for his official friends in England, or for 
the booksellers ; but even this paltry subterfuge we 
shall not allow him ; we shall show that, after all 
his rant about principles and honour, he volunteered 
to be A spvr to the Governor himself, and consum- 
mated his duplicity by forcing on Sir Fludson Lozue 
his reports, not only of what passed amongst the 
men at Longwood, but even interlarded the details 
relative to his female patients, with sneers and sar- 
casms of the lowest kind : we could not have be- 
lieved this on any verbal statement whatsoever — . 
nothing, in short, but the having before our eyes — 
as we have — the proofs, would have induced us to 
state so incredible a fact: and we now proceed to 
lay them before the eyes of our readers. 

Sir Hudson Lowe was accompanied to St. Helena 
by Captain Sir Thomas Read, as aid-de-camp, and 
Major (now Lieutenant-Colonel) Gorrequcr, as mi- 
litary secretary. These two gentlemen partake, of 
course, next to Sir Hudson, the honour of O'Me.ira's 
abuse ; almost every time that he mentions their 
names, it is to cast some ridicule or odium upon 
ihera. Yet it is to these gentlemen that he was i't 



( 30 ) 

ihe habit, voluntarily, of addressing frequent notes, 
containing the intelligence which we are about to 
produce, and which, after all the surgeon's boasting 
oi Sir Hudson's designs, and of his own high prin- 
ciples of honour, will astonish the world. 

In these notes, we see no allusion to their being 
answers to any inquiries ; and several passages dis- 
tinctly show that they were O^Meara's own wn- 
prompted eflfusions. In a note to Sir Thomas ^ead, 
dated 6th July, 1816, after recounting an anecdote 
of Madame Bertrand, (which we shall hereafter 
quote for another purpose,) he concludes — 

* If you think Sir Hudson would like to know the 
above circumstances, you had better communicate them to 
him.' 

Here we find that so little desirous was Sir Hud- 
son of hearing tittlfe-tattle, that in a matter of con- 
siderable curiosity and importance, (as we shall see 
when we come to the anecdote itself,) O'Meara 
speaks doubtfully about Sir Hudson's even wishing 
to hear any reports. Again he says, in another note 
to SirThonaas Read, dated 12th July, 1816 — 

^ Madame Bertrand told me yesterday, that Las Cases 
had said the emperor was his god — the object of his vene- 
ration and adoration ! This she desired me not to mention* 
i forgot to tell it to Sir Hudson yesterday ; I dare say it 
will make him smile.' 

Here again is a piece of idle chit-chat of no kind 
of importance, except that Madame Bertrand de- 
sired it not to be repeated ; and yet O'Meara, 
merely with a view to make Sir Hudson smile, has- 
tens to impart it to Sir Thomas Read, with a kind 
of apology for having forgotten to betray his female 
patient the very day she had made him her con- 
fidant. 

In a third note O'Meara states a certain fact to 



( 31 ) 

Sir Thomas Read, and authorizes him, ' if he thinks 
it would be acceptable, to communicate it to Sir 
Hudson Lowe, but not as coming from him.' 

We suppose our readers will not ask any further 
proof that O'Meara's communications of this nature 
were not only not forced — but not even asked — from 
him, and that they were, in the strictest sense of the 
word, voluntary. Nor were they what can be called 
private ; for the two officers seem to have had no 
private acquaintance with O'Meara, and the notes 
were generally addressed to them in their official 
characters. They usually began with some matter 
of business, and then the little anecdotes — speci- 
mens of which we are about to produce — were, as 
if casually, slided in. The honourable minds of Sir 
Thomas Read and Colonel Gorrequer never con- 
ceived the double treachery which O'Meara was 
practising, and they looked upon these anecdotes 
as the ordinary gossip of a village doctor, and paid 
little attention to them, till the subsequent conduct 
and calumnies of O'Meara recalled them to recol- 
lection ; and it was found that, b}'^ good luck, 
enough of this correspondence bad been preserved 
to confound the Avriter. 

We have Sir Tiiomas Read's and Colonel Gor- 
requer's authority for this statement, and the notes 
themselves are deposited in Mr. Murray's hands,* 
to satisfy any one who might doubt the accuracy of 
our quotations, which, we confess, will be scarcely 
credible. 

Let us look at some of the topics of these com- 
munications, and compare them with the corres- 
ponding passages of his work. The reader will see, 
that to the baseness of espionage,'' he adds that of 



* The publisher of the Quarterly Review. Am. Pub. 



( 32 ) 

iVisifjing in his book the statements which he had 
originally made. 

One of the most grievous, and apparently the 
least excusable, offences charged upon Sir Hudson 
Lowe, is, that on the arrival of the Marquis de 
Monchenu, the French commissioner, at St. Helena, 
Sir Hudson refused Madame Bertrand permission 
to see, and inquire of the Marquis the state of her 
mother'' s health, whom he had lately seen; and that 
he rejected, with equal cruelty, a similar desire 
from Las Cases to inquire after his wife, 

' July 6^A, 1816. — Madame Bertrand informed Captain 
Poppleton and myself, that she had written a letter to M. 
Monchenu, in which she had requested him to call at her 
residence, as she had heard that he had seen her mother, 
who zvas in an indifferent state of health, and she was 
very desirous ta inquire about her ; that Las Cases would 
also come and meet him on his arrival, as he was informed 
that Monchenu had seen his wife a short time before his 
departure from Paris.' — vol. i. p. 70. 

The fact of this letter having been sent direct to 
the French commissioner, and without the Governor'' s 
knowledge^ was enough of itself to prevent M. de 
Monchenu's accepting the invitation ; but this was 
wrested into a design of Sir Hudson to torment Ma- 
dame Bertrand, when, in fact, he only disapproved 
of the invitation having been sent by an improper 
and secret channel. It is obvious, that if Madame 
Bertrand could have a letter of invitation irregu= 
larly conveyed, she might equally well have had 
letters of another import; and the practice once es- 
tabhshed, there would have been no hmits to the 
correspondence, and no check whatsoever on Buo- 
naparte's intrigues. But was it, indeed, hkely that 
Madame Bertrand's tihal piety, and poor Las Cases's 
uxorious anxiety, were to be made the cover of a 
'Gommunication of Buonaparte'' s ? — perhaps not like- 



( 33 ) 

ly, but it was so ! — the story of the mother and wife 
was ail di fable, and the whole was a device of Buo- 
naparte^s oivn, to open a communication with the 
newly-arrived Frenchman ; and the best part of the 
ai!air is, that it was O'Meara himself — the faithful, 
coniidential, high-minded O'Meara — who betrayed 
the plot, and put Sir Hudson Lowe on his guard 
against the fraudulent pretences of Madame Ber- 
trand's letter. On the very day that Madame Ber- 
trand made him the confidence above stated, viz. 
on the 6th July, he writes to Sir Thomas Read the 
following very different account of it, 

' JNIadame Bertrand told me this morning, that the letter 
she wrote to Monchenu was at the express desire of Buo- 
naparte himself y* repeated twice to her; and that in case 
he had come up, old Las Cases was to have immediately 
proceeded to her house in order to have an interview* 
with him. 

' If you think Sir Hudson would like to know the above 
circumstances, you had better communicate them to 
him.' 

Not a word of the mother — not a word of the wife 
— not the slightest allusion to ill-health and anxie- 
ties ; but a direct and clear warning to Sir Hudson 
Lowe to beware of the plot which Buonaparte had 
planned, and to prevent the interview — which 
word, in order to mark his own suspicions that an 
illegal interviezu was intended, O'Meara had written 
in great letters, and double-underlined. 

As Madame Bertrand's letter had been sent pri- 
vately, this advice of O'Meara's was all that Sir 
Hudson Lowe could have known of the matter, and 
it is not therefore surprising that he should have re- 

* Tlie itaUcs and lar^e letters are so marked in O'Meara's 
original note, with the obvious view of guiding the Governor's 
suspicions to the real facts of the case. 



( 34 ) 

fused his sanction to the interview, if ever, indeed, 
his sanction was asked, which does not appear. 

What will O'Meara and his friends and admirers 
say to this ? Here is another dilemma, quite as fata! 
as that proposed in Mr. Croker's letter ; the men- 
tion of the wife, and mother^ and ill-health, as stated 
in his publication, is either a gross falsehood, or the 
omitting to mention them in his note of the same 
day, and the giving another character to the trans- 
action, are a gross suppression and perversion of 
the truth. 

All this happened on the 6th July ; yet, under 
the date of the 11th July, O'Meara relates, in his 
Journal, the following conversation with Sir Hud- 
son :— » 

* His excellency asked me, whether I knew what they 
(the French) wanted with the Marquis de Monchenu? — I 
replied, that Madame Bertrand wished to inquire after her 
mother's health; and ;hat Las Cases was to have met him 
at her house, and that T was mformed he was very anxious 
to inquire about his ivife, as he had been told that Mon- 
chenu had seen her shortly before his departure from Pa- 
ris.' — vol. i. p. 72. 

This is evidently a falsehood ; for as he had, on 
the 6th, acquainted Sir Thomas Read, for Sir Hud- 
son Lowe's information, that the letter was a device 
oi Buonaparte'^ s own,\i was impossible that he should 
have told Sir Hudson himself, en the 11th, that it 
was prompted by Madame Bertrand's anxiety about 
her mother. But then comes, what perhaps was a 
chief ohject of the whole intrigue, the ahuse of Sir 
Hudson Lowe, for having been so wantonly cruel 
to ^ poor Madame Bertrand,'^ On the 12th, O'Meara 
describes Buonaparte as saying — 

* This Governor is a wretched creature, and worse than 
tht island. Remark his conduct to that poor lady^ Ma- 



( 36 ) 

dame Bertrand; he has deprived her of the little Hberty 
she had, and has prevented people from coming to visit 
her.' — vol. i. p. 74. 

Again, on the IGth, Buonaparte returns to the 
subject with a taste and (ielicacy quite characteris- 
tic of him : — 

* This Governor has really the Iteart of a hangman, for 
nobody but a hangman would unnecessarily increase the 
miseries of people situated like us, already too unhappy. 
His hands soil every thing that passes through them. See 
how he torments that poor lady, Madame Bertrand.' — = 
vol. i. p. 78. 

What can be said of a man who publishes to the 
world such calumnies in such language, and con- 
ceals — first, that they are wholly unmerited ; and — 
secondly, that if there had been any thing to blame, 
it was prompted by his own suggestions ! 

But while all this brutal insolence against Sir 
Hudson, on pretence of his treatment of Madame 
Bertrand, is thus recorded, it appears, from another 
note of O'Meara's to Sir Thomas Read, that the 
poor lady herself felt no resentment, had no com- 
plaint to make, and that she herself laid the blame 
of Buonaparte's violence against Sir Hudson, on the 
malicious representations of Las Cases. 

< Madame Bertrand also says, that Las Cases is the prin- 
cipal person who sets Buonaparte so much against Sir 
Hudson; and that Buonaparte says, the English govern- 
ment have sent out two sharks to devour them, the one 
Sir George Cockburn, and the other Sir Hudson.' — Note 
ofSthJulij, 181G. 

We shall conclude this important topic by ob- 
serving, that Buonaparte's design in having this let- 
ter written was, probably not in any hope he enter- 
tained of seducing M. de Monchenu : but the Act 



( 36 ) 

of Parliament for regulating the intercourse at St* 
Helena had just arrived, and the Governor, in obe- 
dience thereto, had pubhshed a proclamation for- 
bidding (except under certain specified regulations) 
any written communication between the detenus 
and the other inhabitants. It was to brave this 
proclamation that Buonaparte^ immediately on its 
publication^ desired, and by repeated orders obliged, 
Madame Bertrand to break the law and defy the 
Governor's authority; and, with his usual artifice, 
he thought it would sound more cruel to have it 
said that it was the letter of a poor lady which was 
intercepted: and — that the letter itself might not 
want the sympathy of tender hearts-— the fable of 
the wife, and the mother, and the ill-health, and the 
anxiety, was introduced. In short, it is impossible 
to give a more striking specimen of the candour 
and simplicity of Buonaparte, and of the honour 
and accuracy of O'Meara, than may be collected 
from a due consideration of the whole of this extra*- 
ordinary transaction, which, by the fortunate pre- 
servation of O'Meara's note to Sir Thomas Read, 
we have been enabled thus to develop. 

We need not (indeed our limits would not per- 
mit it) extract the thousand passages in which 
O'Meara's publication repeats the complaints of the 
French upon their hard usage and ill treatment; 
nearly half his book is composed of them ; and all 
that Warden, Santini, Las Cases, and Montholon, 
have written on this point, is repeated with addi- 
tional vehemence and exaggeration by O'Meara ; 
but as to the truth of these complaints, and of the 
objects for which, and the spirit in which, they 
were made by Buonaparte and his followers, we 
have O'Meara's own evidence, in another of his 
precious notes to Sir Thomas Read, dated July 24, 
1816, 



( 37 ) 

< I understand from Madame Bertrand, that they (the 
French) have it in contemplation to forward a letter of 
complaint against Sir Hudson Lowe, to England, by 
what (channel I did not understand) containing no doubt 
various untruths, and praying that he may be recalled^ 
you had better give Sir Hudson a hint about it ; but let 
it be between you and me only j as, though I have reason 
to think SOME plot is hatching, I am not quite sure of 
it, and any premature disclosure would not be the thing.^ 

Kot the thing / elegant O'Meara! — And we beg 
our readers to observe his anxiety lest any prema- 
ture disclosure should disable him from detecting 
the progress of the plot. One is curious to know 
what this plot was, the hatching of which the close 
and trusty surgeon thus communicates ; — what the 
untruths were of which his delicacy and honour ap- 
prise Sir Thomas Read. Our readers must re- 
member the famous letter written by Buonaparte 
himself, and signed by Montholon (reviewed in our 
Number of April, 1817.) This letter is the authen- 
tic text-book from which all the partizans of Buo- 
naparte have drawn their facts of his ill treatment; 
this letter was, we believe, the chief cause of Lord 
Holland's motion in the Lords, and furnished the 
main topics of his speech; this letter, in short, is 
the authentic and official document in which are 
embodied all the hardships and grievances which 
O'Meara's publication repeats in a moje colloquial 
and diffuse manner, but with greater vehemence of 
statement, and grosser violence of language— Well! 
this very letter is the very plot which O'Meara 
denounces ; and these very hardships and grievan- 
ces are the very untruths which he suspects to 
be in preparation. — He subsequently tells Sir Tho- 
mas Read — 

* I believe I was pretty accurate in the information I 
gave you about Montholon^s letter (these words areunder- 

D 



( 38 ) 

Ikied by O'Mcara's own hand.) Montholon lias been 
very busy finding out the price of every article used in the 
house, which he carefully committed to paper ; he keeps 
a register of every article in the eating and drinking way 
which arrives.* 

We must here interrupt our spy to observe, that 
his ovni publication registers the grievances in ' the 
eating and drinking vsray' with as much detail as 
Montholon could have done, and, we believe, with 
equal truth; and throughout his work, as we al- 
ready observed, he confirms, with all his force^ 
Montholon's statements, which on his private notes 
he had characterized as untruths* Witness the 
Allowing extract from his Journal of the 10th of 
July, 1816. 

* A great deficiency has existed for several days in the 
quantity of wine^ fowls, and other necessary articles—^ 
wrote to Sir Thomas Read about itJ^^\o\. i. p. 71. 

Here, at last, is one word of truth. He did write 
to Sir Thomas Read about z7,*-*^but mark what fol- 
lows. The letter to Sir Thomas Read has beea 
most fortunately preserved, and in it is found, aftei" 
the statement of the deficiency, the following para- 
graph. 

* They (the French) are sufiiciently malignant to im^ 
pute all those things to the Governor ; instead of setting 
them down as being owing to the neglect of some of Bal- 
combe (the purveyor's) people. Every little circumstance 
Is carried directly to Buonaparte, with every aggravation 
that MALIGNITY and falsehood can suggest to evil-dis' 
^osed and cankered minds.' 

Need we write another syllable? Out of thg 
Qwn mouth shall thou be judged; and here, if the 
wretched man himself were alone concerned, we 
should leave him ; but truth and justice to others 



( 39 ) 

oblige us to proceed with the nauseous detail of the 
^ malignity and falsehood' of this ' cvil-disposed and 
cankered mind,'' — ' 1 thank thee, Jew, for teaching 
mc that word.' 

Count Montholon's name has been so interwo- 
ven with all this tissue of complaint against Sir 
Hudson Lowe, and his authority is so often referred 
to, that it is necessaiy to state O'Meara's confiden- 
tial opinion of this person. 

The first instance we shall give is very remark- 
able when coupled with O'Meara's own imputations 
against Sir Hudson Lowe relative to the poison, A 
complaint had been made that the copper saucepans 
wanted tinning; on this O'Meara states (vol, i. p. 
120,) that he wrote to Col. Gorrequer, ' to request 
that a tradesman might be sent to repair them.' 
His letter to Col. Gorrequer has been preserved, 
and contains the following passage : — 

^ You had better take some steps to have them repaired, 
as Montholon is malicious enough to assert, that it was 
neglected on purpose to poison theniy and very likely he 
has already done so? — Note of 13th Sept. 18l6. 

In the publication, (vol. i. p. 3G3,) O'Meara 
imputes to Sir Hudson Lowe, the having, on the 
3 1st of January, 18 J 7, called Count Montholon a 
liar. Now it happens that this was O'Meara's 
own designation of the Count, and was used by him 
to Sir Hudson Lowe, and not by Sir Hudson Lowe 
to him. Tn a note to Major Gorrequer, dated the 
10th of October, 1816 — several months prior to 
the imputed use of the word by the Governor- 
having occasion to mention Montholon's name, he 
adds,—' better known htre (viz. in J3uonaparte's 
family) by the appellation of "t/ buggiardo,''^ — the 

LIAR?' 

And again, in another letter to the earae officer. 



( 4-0 ) 

^ 1 (O^'Mcara) explained to Montholon — who, if he were 
aot a COWARD and a liar,* would be a fine fellow, and, 
abating these two little defects, is a perfect gentleman ;— 
that you were combining heaven and earth to lodge h ira* 
and his amiable consort in state, which he assented to, 
with several hypocritical grirnaces and professions of 
thanks.' — Note of 21st Jiine,lSl6. 

We shall leave Count Montholon to settle with 
Mr. O'Meara the complimentary part of this inform 
mation ; but we must notice, that, notwithstanding 
O'Meara explained, and Montholon thankfully ac^ 
knowledged that Major Gorrequer ' was combining 
heaven and earth to lodge him and his lady,' we 
lind in the Journal, under the date of Septemberj 
1816, the following grievous statement of their ha- 
bitation :— 

* Count Montholon called Captain Blakeney and myself 
this day to look at the state of his apartments; the roomsj 
especially the countess's bed-room, the children's room, 
and the bath-room, were in a shocking state, from the 
extreme humidity of the place; the walls were covered 
with green fur and mould, damp and cold to the touch, not- 
withstanding the fires which were continually kept in 
them. I never saw a human habitation in a more mouldy 
or humid state; in which opinion the orderly officer 
agreed.' — vol. ii. p. 210. 

It is to he observed, that this ' dainp, cold, moul- 
dy' hovel had been the residence of the Lieuten- 
ant-Governor of the island, who, with his lady, left 
it at two days' notice, for the reception of Buona- 
parte and his suite ; and since that period no trou- 
ble, no expense had been spared to extend and im- 
prove the accommodation : but although in his 
book it suits Mr. O'Meara to give such a melan- 
choly description, we find in another of his private 

*• XUis part of. the note is, in the original, in Italian.! 



( 41 ) 

notes, that Montholon's apartments were so splen" 
did, as to be an object of jealousy to the French. 

' Cipriani' (the fellow who dropped his real name of 
Franceschi) ' told Buonaparte, that INIontholon's house 
was more like a court — (underlined by O'JMeara himself) 
— than a private house ; that it contained a magazine of 
furniture; and that when he could not find any thing else, 
so desirous was he of grabbing* something, that he went 
out and laid hold of the wood for fuely and carried it with 
him into his store. Buonaparte sent for Montholon im- 
mediately after, and they have been since closeted together 
above three hours.' — Note ofTth Sept. I8l6. 

We are very far from being inclined to judge of 
Count Montholon from the reports of such persons 
as O'Meara and Cipriani ; but in weighing the ac- 
curacy and authenticity of O'Meara's publication, 
it is impossible not to observe upon such assertions 
as the foregoing, that the liar, and coward^ and 
plunderer, of the private notes, is a disinterested 
hero in the public work; and, what is the most ri- 
diculous rapprochement of all, it is to this proverbial 
LIAR, as he designates Count de Montholon, that the 
writer refers, in his preface, for his own veracity^ 
It is painful to be obliged to repeat these persona- 
lities, but the exposure of O'Mcara requires it, and 
truth and justice require the exposure of O'Meara. 

We trust that a similar apology will be accepted 
for the statements we are about to make. It is odious 
to us to bring the names of ladies before the public 
in any way that may be unpleasant to their feeh'ngs; 
but justice to the authorities at St. Helena, and to 
the British nation itself, obliges us to state that this 
man, who accuses Sir Hudson Lowe of making 
^ common-place observations on tlic delicacy of 

* We do not know exactly what this word means— we sup» 
pose ueating. 



( 42 ) 

Freneh ladies/ (vol. ii. p. 338,) and who makes a 
still grosser charge of indelicacy on the part of Sir 
Thomas Read, (i. 21 9,) is, as in the former case, 
the person really guilty of what he imputes to others j 
and that he not only makes in detail the identical 
observations which he charges in general terms upon 
Sir Thomas Read; but betrays, in the most delicate 
points, the secrets, even the medical secrets, of his 
female patients, and defames, with the grossest im- 
putations, the personal honour of at least one of 
them. Our respect for female feelings and public 
decency forbid us to enter into these revolting de- 
tails; but the letters which our pen refuses to copy 
are lying before us, and shall be communicated to 
Counts Bertrand and Montholon, if they ever con^ 
descend to take any notice of such unmanly calum- 
nies. 

Here we pause to ask our readers, whether we 
have not redeemed the pledge we gave at the be- 
ginning of this article B — whether any man alive can 
now give the slightest credit to this work ? whether 
its author ought not to be overwhelmed with shame ; 
whether his partizans are not covered with ridicule ;: 
whether there ever has been so complete, so igno- 
minious an exposure as that which we have inflicted 
©n the luckless O'Meara? 

And there we leave him — 

With regard to that part of the volume which 
affects Buonaparte personally, and pretends to re- 
late his conversations and opinions, it is so disgrace- 
ful to the character of the ex-emperor, that the 
friends of Buonaparte— or to speak more properly, 
the persons whose own reputation and characters 
are at all implicated with his — will, no doubt, com- 
plain of the injustice of giving credit to the misre- 
presentations of O'Meara; they will ask whether 
jivldencej which is so entirely disproved ia the case 



( 43 ) 

of Sir Hudson Lowe, should be credited against 
Napoleon ? whether it is possible that he could be 
guilty of such deplorable meanness of spirit, and 
such scurrilous vulgarity of expression, as defiles 
every sentiment and sentence attributed to him ? 
and, finally, whether they are not much more likely 
to be the thoughts and words of such a person as> 
O'Meara, than of one who was of a decent family^ 
had some education, and was (for the latter and 
most important half of his life) conversant with the 
highest classes of polished society ? 

This is plausible ; but we cannot admit all the 
facts, and we must deny most of the inferences. It 
is true that O'Meara is wholly unworthy of credit ; 
but who made him so ? — It is true that he is a gross 
calumniator; but in whose cause did he become so? 
— It is true that his book is the very vocabulary of 
Billingsgate ; but in whose society did he complete 
it ? It must also be observed, that the matter does 
not altogether rest on the credit of O'Meara alone. 
Most of the facts, and many of the expressions re- 
ported by the surgeon, were already before the 
public. Warden, Santini and Lag Cases, have an- 
ticipated a great deal of O'Meara's narrative ; and 
although we are ready to admit, that Buonaparte's 
scurrility and falsehood may have been somewhat 
exaggerated in passing through so impure a channel, 
we incline to beheve that, on the whole, the reports 
of his conversations may be substantially correct. 

His manners and conversation were always vul- 
gar, and often brutal; his origin, if not mean, was 
low ; and as it was said of Lord Anson, that he had 
been round the world, but never in it; so we might 
say that Buonaparte passed over society, but not 
through it; he did not rise through the graduated 
scale of hfe, a process which, even more than the 
Mts themselves, emoliit mons mc sinit esse feros: 



imri^i^QSi'i 



( 44 ) 

le jumped at once from the base to the pinnacle^ 
from the meanness of a needy adventurer, hving m 
the cheap cabarets of Paris, to the power and glorj 
of the commander-in-chief of the army of Italy;- 
from eating off pewter one day, to* being served in 
gold the next. He arrived a.t the sovereign author- 
ity, without having had any opportunity of polishing 
the coarse habits of his earlier life; and when, like 
the drunken tinker of the prophetic painter of man- 
kind, he awoke amidst the elegancies of the palace 
of his master, he endeavoured to persuade himsell 
itnd the world, 

• That J on Eis life, he wa& a lord indeed g 
And not a tinker, not Cristophero Sly.' 

In St. Helena, the majesty, the sovereignty, the 
power which had dazzled the multitude were gone, 
and nothing remained but the second part of his 
character, the vulgarity, the m€ann€ss, and the 
fraud ;— 



*Le masque tombe, rhomme restej- 
Et le heros s'evanouit !* 



With prodigious talents he undoubtedly was gift- 
ed; he was artful, shrewd, and daring, and he had a 
perfect knowledge of all the bad qualities of man- 
kind; but of what we understand by 'the feelings 
of a gentleman/ he had no idea ; — he mistook glory 
for honour ; we find, accordingly, that amidst all 
the splendour, and, we will add, sublimity of his 
character, there was no language so gross — no false- 
hoods so flagrant — no subterfuge so mean — no trick 
so puerile and contemptible — which he would not 
condescend to employ for any and for every pur- 
pose; every page of his personal history affords 
f roof of this, but none with such striking effect aa 
this. ' Voice ii'om St* ^lelenaJ 



( 45 ) 

Our readers have seen that, in the verj first dajS' 
ot Sir Hudson Lowe's acquaintance with him, he 
abandoned all decency of language, and gave way 
to the natural license of his tongue. It is truly 
astonishing, that the temper and self-command of 
Sir Hudson Lowe should have maintained them- 
selves under such trials as O'Meara describes. No 
allegation is even whispered, that Sir Hudson ever 
lost, in their conferences, the respect which he 
©wed to his prisoner and to himself; and when, in 
one or two instances, he appears to have expressed 
himself strongly to O'Meara, on the subject of some 
of Buonaparte's provocations, it was in the tone o£ 
honest indignation, against the most wanton and 
wilful calumnies — repeated and repeated, after they 
had been refuted and re-refuted. 

In a visit of ceremony, one of the first Sir Hudson 
paid Buonaparte, and before any cause of oflience 
had, or could have been given by the Governor, and 
in a conversation about indifferent topics, Buona- 
parte, as he h'lmseM boasts to O'Meara, insulted Sir 
Hudson in the most wanton, and — we want a word 
— Buonapartian manner. 

' It appears,'" said he, * that this Governor was with 
Blucher,' (the fact is not so,) * and is the writer of some 
official letters to your government descriptive of part of 
the operations of 1814.. I pointed them out to him the 
last time I saw him, and asked him, " Est-ce vous, Mon- 
sieur?''^ He replied, " Yes." I told him that they were 
" pleines de faiissetts et de sottises, (full of falsehood and 
folly.) He shrugged up his shoulders, appeared confused, 
and replied — J^ai cru voir cela^ (I wrote what I thought I 
saw.)" ' — vol. i. p. 49. 

In another interview between Buonaparte and 
SirH. Lowe, on the 18th of August, 1816, Buona- 
parte himself says, that after a great deal of violent 
personal abuse against Sir Hudson, the Governor 



( 4S ) 

eontented himself with cahnlj observing — 'thai 
Buonaparte did not know him ; that if he knew h\m 
he would change his apinion.' — vol. i. p» 93. 

To this mild and conciliatory remark, Buonaparte 
replied with a torrent of scurrility, to which his own 
language only can do justice. 

* Know you, Sir !' I answered—^ how slwuld I know 
you ? — people make themselves known by their actions, 
by commanding in battles ; — you never commanded in 
battle ! you have never commanded any but vagabond 
Corsican deserters^ Piedmontese and Neapolitan robbers, 
I know the name of every English general who has dis" 
tinguished himself; but I never heard of you, except as a 
clerk to Blucher, or as a commandant of ro66ers; you 
have never commanded or been accustomed to men of Jw 
nour,^ fie said that he had not sought the employment, 
I answered : — Such employments are not asked for, but 
were given by government to people who had dishonoured 
themselves. He said, that he only did his duty, and that 
I ought not to blame him, as he acted only according to 
his orders. I replied, * so does the hangman P — vol. L 
p. 94. 

In this strain Buonaparte boasts that he went on 
for a considerable time, concluding, at last, by call- 
ing the Governor ' shirro Siciliano, a Sicilian thief ■^ 
taker, and not an Englishman,' We do not believe 
that even Buonaparte could have been guilty of 
such infamous insults; but whatever was his vio- 
lence, it is satisfactory to know that, with modera- 
tion, which nothing but a recollection of Buona- 
parte's situation could either have suggested or jus- 
tified, Sir Hudson only replied, ' Vous etes malhon- 
jiete, Monsieur — Sir, you are rude,' and left him 
abruptly. 

The reader will ask, how it happens that O'Me- 
ara, whose object is to exalt Buonaparte, should 
have related all these conversations, which lowes 



( 47 ) 

the cliaracter of the ex-emperor, while they exalt 
that of Sir Hudson, and contradict so many othens 
of O'Meara's own narrations: — the reason is ob» 
Vious, and roost remarkable. Some of them he had 
already reported in writing, at others Rear Admiral 
Sir Pulteney Malcolm was present ! and therefore 
the disgraceful fact could not be concealed. We 
could fill our Number with similar instances of out- 
rage against the Governor, but we presume our 
readers are already sufficiently convinced of the 
difficulties of Sir Hudson Lowe's position, and the 
trials to which the feelings and the temper of & 
British officer were thus exposed* 

But it was not against Sir Hu<}son Lowe alone 
that Buonaparte directed his Billingsgate elo- 
quence ; to all mankind, with a half dozen excep- 
tions, he is equally comj^limentary, anti as long as 
Sir George Cockburn, Sir Hudson's predecessor, 
had the command, he was equally odious, and 
equally abused. O'Meara conveniently begins his 
Journal with Sir Hudson Lowe's accession to the 
governnvent, so that he is not obliged to detail all 
iBuonaparte's slander of Sir George Cockburn ; nay^ 
it became their olwect to raise Aim, for the purpose 
of degrading his successor; but enough escapes to 
^how, that if all had been reported, Sir George 
would not have fared better than Sir Hudson. 

< Napoleon said, " I believe the Admiral (Sir George 
Cockburn) was rather ill treated the other day, when he 
•came up with the new Governor;" I (O'Meara) replied^ 
that the Admiral conceived it an insult oflered to him, and 
certainly felt greatly offended. Napoleon said, I shall 
never see him with pleasure ; but he did not announce 
himseflf as being desirous of seeing me.'— vol i. p. 29- 

That is. Sir George had not gone through the 
ceremony which Buonaparte exacted, of asking, 



■'( m ) 

trough ^/ie Grand Marshal of the palace, an audi- 
■€nce of leave from his Imperial Majesty, O'Meara 
iiowevcF, parried this grievance by observing, that->i 

^ Sir George wished to introduce officially to you the 
5iew Governor, and thought that, in that capacity, it was 
530t necessary to be previously announced. '-^vdl. i. p. 29. 

Nor was it, even if Buonaparte had been at the 
Tuilleries ; for the interview had been previously i 
arranged ; but he replied, with his usual falsehood 
and violence :-^ 

« He should have sent me word, through Bertrand, (the 
grand marshal,) that he wanted to see me 5 but, continued 
he, he wanted to embroil me with the new Governor; it is 
a pity that a man who has talents (for I believe him to bfe 
f very good officer in his own service) should have behaved 
in the manner he has done to me 5 it shows the greatest 
want of generosity to insult the unfortunate, and is a cer- 
tain sign of an ignohlemmA? — vol.i.p. 30. 

O'Meara represents that he attempted a defence 
of the Admiral, but that Buonaparte resumed—* Ift 
my misfortunes 1 nought ati asylucfi, and I have 
found contempt, ill treatment, and insult,'^ (i. 30.) 
And then he proceeded to enumerate his grievances 
against Sir George Gockbum, which are too con- 
temptible for detailed notice. 

In another conversation, O'Meara tells him that, 
when Emperor, he had caused Sir George Cock- 
l)urn's brother to be arrested, while envoy at Ham- 
bro', and conveyed to France, where he w^s detain- 
ed for some years. — vol. i. p. 1 27. 

«Now,' replied Buonaparte, <Ican comprehend the 
reason why your ministers selected him. A man of deli- 
cacy would not have accepted the task of conducting m6 
here under similar circumstances.' — vol. i. p. 128. 

Our readers will obBerve the unworthy insinua- 



( ^'^ ) 

tion that our ministers selected Sir George Cock° 
burn, because they thought he had some private 
^ enmities to revenge upon his prisoner ; and that Sir 
George had the indehcacy to accept the office, un- 
■ der such circumstances. — Now mark the fact — the 
' envoy arrested at Hamburgh was, as we recollect, 
Sir George Rumbold : and Mr. Cockburn, as any 
one may find in the Red Book, was not envoy there 
till after the retreat from Moscow : and thus fall to 
the ground at once the charge against the govern- 
ment and the base insinuation asrainst vSir George 
Cockburn ! 

Next to Sir Hudson Lowe and Sir George Cock- 
burn, the objects of Buonaparte's abhorrence arc — 
O.S they ought to be — the Duke of Wellington and 
the late Marquis of Londonderry. With that truth 
and consistency which belong to his character, Buo- 
naparte assures the assenting O'Meara, that Wel- 
lington is no general : — that he is a man of no un- 
derstanding, no generosity, no magnanimity (ii. 231) 
— that he won the battle of Waterloo by accident, 
by destiny, or by folly (i. 174) : — that he ought to 
iiave been destroyed — that the plan of the battle 
will not reflect any credit on him in the eyes of the 
historian — that he committed nothing but faults — 
chose a miserable position — permitted himself to 
be surprised •, — in short, that he had no talent, but 
only courage and obstinacy : and ' even something 
must be taken away from that ; for it is to the cou- 
rage of his troops, and not to his own conduct as a 
general,' that he is indebted for the victory (i. 4G3, 
4 16.) All this silly stutfis tedious'.y and elaborately 
spun out by O'Meara ; but v/e shall content our- 
selves with only two observations on it : — // the 
Duke of Welhngton was surprised at Waterloo, and 
if his plan was so foolish, and his position so ill 
chosen, what shall b*e said of those who suifered 

E 



( 50 ) 

themselves to be beaten by such an incapable ge- 
neral ; and beaten, too, in a way, and to an extent 
of rout, that never was before seen in a civihzed 
army ? We also beg to ask of these candid com- 
mentators, why are the Duke's previous campaigns 
in Spain never once alluded to ? if accident^ or des- 
tiny^ or folly, won Waterloo, what was it that con- 
quered at Vimiera, Talavera, Oporto, Busaco, Tor- 
res Vedras, Salamanca, Fuentes d'Onor, A^ittoria, 
the Pyrenees, and Toulouse ? By what accident^ 
destiny^ or foUy^ was it that Wellington never was 
defeated ? that, with a small corps on a remote 
coast, he began the liberation of the world, and 
pursued the glorious object, with cautious rapidity^ 
through six years and an hundred battles, from the 
rocks of Roieia to the plain of St. Denis ?*— -We 
could descant with pleasure on this glorious theme; 
but contempt for the occasion restrains us. 

Lord Londonderry was, we readily agree with 
Buonaparte, as great a fool in the cabinet, as the 
Duke at the head of his army. It is really amusing 
to observe how diiOerently Buonaparte treats those 
whom he defeated or over-reached, and those who 
defeated him, either in the field or in council ? — 

* The best general of the Austrians,' says he, (i. 203) 

* is the Archduke Charles,' — whom he had beaten ; 
'— ' but Prince Schwartzenberg' — who had beaten 
him., in the gigantic battle of Leipzig — ' vras not fit 
to command 6000 men.' (i. 203.) The Duke of 
Wellington, as we have just seen, has no one qua- 
lity of a general ; but Sir John Moore, the misfor- 
tunes of whose retreat Buonaparte loved to ex- 
aggerate, ' was a brave soldier, an excellent officer, 
and a man of talent,' (i. o5.) In the same spirit, 
be characterizes Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox : — 

* Fox,' he said, ^ knew the inw interests of England* 
He was received with a sort of triumph in every city in 



( ^1 ) 

France threugh which he passed. It must have been a 
most gratifying sensation to him to be received in such a 
manner by a country which had been so long hostile to his 
own. Pitt would probably have been murdered.'' — vol. \u 
p. 121. 

All this is very hard on the memory of poor Mr. 
Fox, and is, we dare say, as false as it is ridiculous ; 
biit if the fact of Mr. Fox's extreme popularity in 
France were true, we cannot subscribe to (he ex- 
emperor's inferences : we doubt wliether Scipio was 
very popular at Carthage ; Regulus, we know, ions 
murdered there ; and we suspect that the opinions 
of the French populace on tlie true inleresh nf Fjig- 
iand will not much disparage the fame of William 
Pitt. 

With equal justice and magnanimity Buonaparte 
never calls Lord Londonderry, to whose ' pertina- 
city' he attributes his downfall, (ii. 83) by any other 
names than ' bhcklicad,^ (i. 160, ii, IGl) • dnpt^^ 
(i. 395) 'libeller,^ (i. 421) 'liar,' (i. iOl, 420, 
ii. 88.) In the excess of his vulgar fui-y, he forgets 
that these endeavours to degrade his antagonists, 
tend, in fact, to degrade his own reputation. But 
when did he ever care for consistemy or truth ? 

The proofs that he adduces of Lord London- 
derry's imbecility and wickedness are aim^^st co- 
mic. We select the following, which, from its be- 
ing frequently repeated, seems to have been his 
cheval de halaille against the diplomatic reputation 
of the late secretary of state : — 

^ "At the conclusion of the war your ministers," he 
said, " should have told the Spanish and Portugueze go- 
vernments, ' We have saved your country — we alone 
have supported you, and prevented your falling into the 
power of France — (what ! can the Devil speak true :' ;— - 
we have shed our blood in your cause — we have expended 
many millions of money, and consequently the countryii 



" ( 53 ) , 

overburdened With debt which we must pay ; you have 
110 means of repaying us; our situation requires that we 
should liquidate our debt; we demand therefore that we 
shall be the only nation allowed to trade with South-Ame" 
ricafor twenty years — in this way we shall recompense 
ouselves ivithout distressing i/ou.^' ' — vol. i. p 261. 

Adnriirable ! No doubt Russia, Prussia, Austria, 
Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Italy, and the United 
States, vi^ould have gladly concurred in giving Eng- 
land the exclusive monopoly of the great South- 
American continent for twenty years !• — The object 
would have been so just, the policy so clear, and 
the whole plan so consistent with the laws and the 
interests of nations ! Moreover, the matter had the 
advantage of being arrangeable with as little diffi- 
culty as |"Iarlequin's marriage, afier he had procured 
his own consent. This wonderful treaty, though 
made with Spain and Portugal, was to bind-— not 
them, but<=— their transatlantic colonies ; where, as 
now, they had not the powder of making a custom- 
house officer ! so that there can be no doubt that 
Chili, Peru, and Columbia, would have vied with 
each other in cheerfully executing it. 

Nor is the proposition less admirable on the score 
of commercial advantage. In the first place, Buo- 
naparte has discovered that nations (more fortunate 
than individuals) may eat their cake, and have their 
cake ;— that Spain and Portugal may enrich Eng- 
land, by abandoning to her the greatest branch of 
their commerce, and yet not distress themselves. 
This is a yery comfortable consideration for Spain 
and Portugal, who— the events in South-America 
having given England a paramount superiority in 
that trade — may now console themselves by Buo- 
naparte's posthumous assurance, that they have lost 
nothing. 

But the financial part of this ' grande pensee' 



( 53 ) 

outdoes all the rest. We should like to see the 
treaty, fn the first article his Catholic Majesty 
would engage to his Britannic Majesty, that Simon 
Bolivar, Liberador of Columbia, and Juan San Mar- 
tin, Protector of Peru, should, in obedience to the 
wishes of his said Catholic Majesty, pay off the na- 
tional debt of England ! The second article would 
run — That in consideration of the payments, to be 
thus made to King George, King Ferdinand would 
grant to South-America a free trade with England, 
in as full and ample a manner as she already en- 
joyed the same. The third article would provide, 
that all the profits arising out of such free trade 
should be divided among the merchant adventurers 
who carried on the same, but that the surplus should 
be paid over to the commissioners for reducing the 
national debt of the United Kingdom ! 

We have given a little more attention to this pu- 
erile rhapsody than it may seem at first sight to have 
deserved ; but we thought that we ought not to slur 
over what Buonaparte so solemnly and so frequent- 
ly repeats as a proof of his knowledge of the true 
interests of England, It is indeed an admirable 
specimen of what he taught the French to call a 
' grande pensie;'' but to which we plain Englishmen 
have given the homelier name of' a mare's nest.' 

All his ' grandes pensces'' about England are mark- 
ed with similar presumption, and betray similar ig- 
norance. ' If I were King of England,' he assures 
O'Meara, who no doubt pricked up his long ears at 
the sound, — ' If I were King of England, I would 
' beautify London by building two great quays along 

* the whole length of the Thames, by making two 

* great streets, the one from Charing-Cross to St. 
' Paul's^ and the other from St. Paul's to the river.' 
The great man never thought that such a scheme 
would not only cost him more miUions of livrcs than 

e 2 



lifs Moscow expedition cost France, but that an. 
hundred thousand soldiers, assembled to drive the 
trunk-makers and pastrycooks of the Strand out of 
. their houses, would, have been devoured, as fire de- 
vours stubble, by the flame of national indignation. 
And this was the man whose knowledge of the 
English character, and of English interests, author- 
izes him to call Pitt, and Welhngton, and London- 
derry, blockheads and imbecilles ; and to talk for 
hours to the entranced O'Meara, of the summary 
processes by which he would have conquered Eng- 
land in four days — taken London — paid the national 
debt out of the church property — abolished the 
Xjords — reformed the Commons, and finally placed 
Sir Francis Burdett at the head of a commission for 
a general reformation of the laws of England ! He 
little guessed, poor man, that Sir Francis would 
have probably taken arms against him with as much 
seal as Mr. Pitt ; but that, at all events, he would 
not have given up an open fortnight's huntijig in 
Leicestershire for all the commissmis with which 
the conqueror would have loaded him. 

In our former Numbers, we exposed the petty 
frauds by which Buonaparte endeavoured to obli- 
tierate his Corsican origin, and to pass for a French- 
man. As he, through Mr. O'Meara, repeats these 
frauds, we will repeat the exposure. He says he 
was lx)rn on the 15th of August, 1769, This is 
false. We gave in Art. Xf. of our XXIII. Number, 
a copy of his baptismal register, which proved him 
to have been born on the 5th of February, 1168 ; 
and we also showed, from unquestionable evidence, 
that he had falsified not only the date of his birth, 
but his 02vn Christian and surnar/ies, and the names 
of his first wife and those of all his family. His fal- 
sifications, with regard to his wife and famil}', were 
for the. mere purposes of vanity, in order that the 



( 55 ) 

new names might consort better with their imperial 
titles than those they had received at the baptismal 
font ; but he falsified the date of his own birth, be- 
cause Corsica was not united to France so early as 
February, 1768, so that he was not born even under 
French dominion. That union took place in the 
beginning of 1769, and therefore Buonaparte shifl- 
ed his birth into that rear, and he chose the 15th of 
August for his fcte^ bftcause it was a day vacant o[ 
a saint's name, and which therefore admitted the 
interpolation of St. Napoleon, and also because it 
was the day on which Louis XIII. had dedicated 
France to the Virgin, and was therefore already a 
national festival. As to his name, which he wished 
to have spelled and pronounced Bonaparte, its true 
orthography was decidedly Italian, Buona-Farte : 
he tells O'Meara, that 

^ When he first commanded the army of Italy, he had 
used the U, to please the Italians : that al'ter his return 
from Egypt, he dropped it; that in fact tlie chiels of the 
family, and those who had been highest, had spelled their 
names with the U : adding what a mighty affair had been 
made of so trivial a matter.' — vol. ii. p. 93. 

This latter stroke must have been aimed at our- 
selves, who first, we believe, detected this trick : 
the observation, however, is not so trivial a matter 
as Buonaparte would have us think ; in itseJf, in- 
deed, the matter is utterly indiilerent ; but as a test 
of Buonaparte's veracity, it is of importance — it is 
the straw which we throw up, to see how the wind 
<et3. 

Now so far is it from being true, that he used the 
U to please the Italians, on obtaining the conwnand 
of the army of Italy, that the \ery pages of the Mo- 
niteur contradict him. At the siege of Toulon he 
was Buona- Parle. On the 13th Vcndemiaire, Bar- 



( 56 5 

ras first brings him to public notice as General 
Buona-Parte ; soon after he is appointed second in 
command of the armt/ of the interior, by the name 
of Bwonaparte ; and we will venture to assert^ that 
no document, written or printed, can be produced, 
of the word Bonaparte, until he began to form his 
plans for mounting to the sovereign power, and 
wished to persuade his intended subjects, who would 
have despised a G enoese-Corsican, that he was a 
Frenchman. 

In the wide circle of his enmities there is hardly 
any one whom he marks with grosser abuse than 
Talleyrand ; he admits him to have been a clever 
man, but there is scarcely any vice of which a man 
in private or in public can be guilty, of which he 
does not accuse his former minister ; but he dwells 
particularly on his being an intriguer and a liar^ 
We do not mean to undertake M. Talleyrand's de- 
fence ; but as we happen to be in possession of a 
most curious document, which not only proves that 
poor Talleyrand was not the author of all the in- 
trigues he may have practised, or of all the lies he 
may have told, we think it but justice to him to lay 
it before the world. We also are the more pleased 
in being able to do so, because Buonaparte, with 
his usual justice and urbanity, has characterized our 
amiable and excellent countryman Lord Whitworth 
as being also an intriguer. The paper which we 
are about to produce will satisfy our readers of the 
value of such a charge out of the mouth of Buona- 
parte. But it is still more valuable as an historical 
record, and as a proof at once of the shrewdness of 
Napoleon, and of the mean and tricky spirit which 
actuated even his most important proceedings. 
The paper has been known in the higher circles 
ever since 1815, when it fell into the hands of a dis- 
tinguished Englishman at Paris, who has preserved 



( »7 ) 

it as a most curious autograph; but no copy that 
we know of has ever been laid before the public. 
It is a confidential answer, in Buonaporte's ozoii 
handwriting, to a communication made by Talley- 
rand in the last days of Lord Whitworth's negocia- 
tion at the Consular Court, in 1803, and contains 
not only instructions for the tricks which Talleyrand 
is to endeavour to practise on the English ambassa- 
dor, but prescribes to Talleyrand himself the very 
air, the very look he is to assume, and the very spot 
of his apartment in which he is to make this or that 
observation. 

Of so curious a paper we shall give both the ori- 
ginal and a translation. 

' St. Cloud a 4i. 

^ Je regus votre lettre que m'a etc remise a la Mal- 
inaison. Je desire que la conlerence ne se tourne pas en 
parlage. Mettez vous 3^, froid, altier et meme un peu 
fier ! 

' Si la note contient le mot idtiinatuni fait lui sentir que 
ce mot renlerme celui de guerre, que cette maniere de 
negocier est d'un superieur a un inferieur, si la note ne 
contient j^as ce mot, fait qii^il le mette^ en lui observant 
qu'il taut enlin savoir a quoi nous en tenir, que nous 
sommes las de cet etat d''anxiete, que jamais on n'obtiendra 
de nous ce que I'on a obtenu des dernieres annecs des 
Bourbons, que nous ne sommes plus ce peuplequi recevoit 
un commissaire a Dunkerque, que I'ultiraatum remis tout 
deviendra rompu. 

' EfTrayez le sur les suites de cette remise s'il est 
jnebranlable, accompanez le dans votre salon; au point 
de vous quitter dites lui " mais le Cap et Pisle dc Ooree 
sont lis evacues,''^ radoucissez un peu la tin de la confprence, 
ei invitez le a revenir avant d'ecrire a sa Cour enfin que 
vous puisiez lui dire I'impression qu'elle a fait sur moi — 
qu'elle pouvoit etre diminuee par I'assurance de Tevacua- 
tion du Cap et de Fisle de Goree. 

< B.' 



(58) 

Translation. 

« St. Cloud 4h 

^ I received your letter at Malmaison. I desire that 
conference* (with Lord Whitworth) may not turn into 
talk — put on an air, cold, high, and even a little haughty. 

' If the (British) note contains the word ultimatum^ ol>- 
serve to him that this word includes the word war — that 
such a style of negociation is that of a superior towards an 
Inferior. If the note does not contain that word, make 
him put it in by observing to him that we must know 
clearly and finally what we are about — -that we are tired 
of this state of anxiety— that never shall they obtain from 
us what they obtained during the last years of the Bour- 
bons — that we are no longer th€ same people who sub- 
mitted to have an (English) commissary at Dunkirk — 
that if the ultimatum be postponed all will be broken off. 

* Frighten him on the consequences of the postpone- 
raent. 

* If you cannot shake him, accompany him through 
the outward room, and just when you are about to quit 
blrn say — " but the Cape and the island of Goree, have 
they been evacuated ?" (which he knew they had.) 

* Soften a little towards the end of the conference, and 
invite him to see you again before he writes to his Court, 
" in order that you may tell him the impression it has 
made upon me,^ which may be diminished by the assurance 
of the evacuation of the Cape and Goree." ' 

This would not be the place to make any histo- 
rical observations on this very importarit document, 
as connected with the rupture with France in 180S, 
nor shall we attempt to decide how far diplomacy 
may justify such tricks as the above paper pre- 
scribes. The Chancellor Seguier said, two hundred 
years ago, ' Qu'il y avoit deux sortes de con- 

* This relates to the conference of the 26th April, 1803. It 
will be seen, in the papers laid before Parliament, that Lord 
Whitworth bafRed Buonaparte's trick, by not delivering any 
note, and by confining himself to a verbal explanation of his 
former communications. 



( 5d ) 

science — I'une d'etat, qu'il falloit aCcommoder a 
la necessite des affaires : I'autre a nos actions par- 
ticulieres.' But under any circumstances a person 
who thinks himself justified in practising such false* 
hood and duplicity has no right to charge such er- 
rors in the grossest language on two persons, one 
of whom was the instrument, and the other only the 
object of his own intended fraud. 

It would require a volume as large as O'Meara's 
to develop all the falsehoods and calumnies which 
Buonaparte registers against so many individuals ; 
but there is one so very black and malignant, that 
we niust give its refutation a place. 

' " Madame Campan," continued Napoleon, " had a 
very indifferent opinion of Marie Antoinette. She told 
me that a person, well known for his attachment to the 
queen, came to see her at Versailles, on the 5lh or 6th of 
October, where he remained all night. The palace was 
stormed by the populace. Marie Antoinette fled undressed 
from h«r own chamber to that cf the king for shelter, and 
the lover descended from the window. On going to seek 
the queen in her bed-room, Madame Campan found she 
was absent, but discovered a pair of breeches, which the 
favourite had left behind in his haste, and which were im- 
mediately recognized." '■ — vol. i. p. 122. 

This diabolical story fixes a more indelible dis- 
grace on Buonaparte's character than any thing we 
have ever heard concerning him. This abominable 
slander of that heroic woman may be placed by the 
side of the ^e/bre-unparaljeled calumny with which, 
,^t her trial, Hebert insulted human natare. If 
Madame Campan had tohi Buonaparte this horrible 
tale, he must have known it to be false. The scene 
and circumstances of the dreadful night between 
tiic 5th and 6th October are too notorious to leave 
any doubt, how, and where, and with whom the un- 
happy queen passed every moment of that horrible 



( 60 ) 

interval : every body knows that the palace had 
been blockaded from an early hour in the evening, 
by fiends, who particularly besieged the apartments 
of the queen ; the female part of the crowd showing 
the aprons in which they intended, they said, to 
carry off — why should we pollute our language with 
such horrors ?— ' les entrailles de V Autrichienne^ 
dont elks feraient des cocardes,^ The windows of 
this apartment are about thirty feet from the 
ground ; and it was this very night of horrors that 
Buonaparte aifected to believe the queen had dedi- 
cated to an adulterous intrigue ! and it was from this 
window, and into this crowd, that he supposed the 
iiaked lover to have escaped! No, not in all the 
obscene and absurd libels of the Revolution was 
there any thing so false and so absurd as this ; it 
was reserved for Buonaparte and O'Meara, and it 
is worthy of them. 

But, oh ! wonderful coincidence ! while we are 
writing these lines, we receive the Memoirs of Ma- 
dame Campan herself— memoirs, the existence of 
which neither Buonaparte nor O'Meara knew ofj 
and which — in a manner that, on such a subject, we 
may almost venture to call providential- — disprove 
the black calumny, and fix, in burning characters, 
on the forehead of Buonaparte himself, that name 
which he was so ready to give to others—' Liar,' 

Madame Campan was first woman of the bed- 
chamber to the queen 5 after escaping, almost by a 
miracle, through the reign of terror, she, for her 
maintenance, applied her talents to the education 
of young ladies ; her rank, her character, (and par- 
ticularly on account of her fidelity to her late mis- 
tress,) soon placed her at the head of the most ex- 
tensive, and one of the most respectable seminaries 
in France : under her care were placed the young 
Beauharnais, Buonaparte's step-children : hence 



an acquaintance with Buonaparte, which he has 
abused, to give currency and colour to the scanda- 
lous falsehood which O'JVl^ara has published. 

Madame Campan died last year ; and in her [)u- 
reau were found most curious and authentic me- 
moirs of her life during her service about the queen, 
which was so intimate and assiduous, that the me- 
moirs may well be called memoirs of the queen 
herself. We have suspended this review to read 
them ; we have read them with delight, and with 
most delight to find, not an argumentative, but a 
plain, direct, physical proof — 720^ merely of the 
queen^s innocence; that required none ; but — of the 
entire and absolute falsehood of Buonaparte. I^ot 
only was it impossible that such a fact could have 
happened, but it is equally impossible that Madame 
Campan could have told any thing hke it to Buona- 
parte : she adored the queen ; she, on all occasions, 
indignantly refutes the various slanders (none so 
bad as this) with which the O'Mearas of that day, 
and perhaps Buonaparte himself, who was a violent 
though obscure jacobin, reviled that innocent and 
admirable woman. 

The queen, Madame Campan relates, sat up that 
night, accompanied by her family and usual attend- 
ants, harassed by the infuriate yells of the furies 
who had surrounded her apartment from an early 
hour the preceding evening. About two o'clock in 
the morning fatigue subdued a little the noise and 
violence of the mob ; and the queen herself, wea- 
ried out by the toils and the troubles of the eventful 
day, was undressed, as usual, hy her two ladies, 
(one was Madame Campan's sister,) and soon fell 
asleep. She, with her usual kindness^ ordered these 
ladies also to retire to repose : they fortunately 
disobeyed her ; perhaps, indeed, they might have 
found some difficulty in getting away, for the mob 

F 



( 62 ) 

was on the staircases, and besieged the doors. They 
therefore, with their own two femmes-de-chambrej 
sat down clustered together, with their backs 
against the door of the queen's bed-chamber : in 
this feverish state they remained for about two 
hours ; but at half past four o'clock, shots and 
dreadful cries announced the renewal of the attack; 
the apartment was assailed by the reinforced mob ; 
the doors were forced ; the garde du corps who at- 
tempted to defend them massacred; and the ladies 
had barely time to hurry the queen away, by a back 
passage which communicated with the king's apart- 
ment. While the queen thus sought the king, he, 
equally alarmed for her, had proceeded to her 
chamber; he pursued a private passage which com- 
municated from his bed-room to her's, and of which 
he had the keys ; — (what a scene for a dishonour- 
able intrigue !) — but, on his arrival, found only the 
guards, who, beaten from the exterior room, had 
barricaded themselves in this ; he then hurried back 
to his own apartment, and there had the momentary 
consolation of finding his wife and children safe and 
assembled. So far we have traced the queen. Now 
for Madame Campan, who, it appears, never visited 
the queen's room at all that morning; she happened 
not to be in waiting ; but before the royal family 
were dragged to Paris, the queen sent for her to 
confide to her care, and that of her father-in-law, 
some valuable effects; directing her, with tears and 
caresses, to follew her to Paris, where she would 
endeavour to have the consolation of her service. 

If we wished merely to create a sensation of 
horror against a monster worse than the wretches 
who only murdered the unhappy queen, we should 
stop here ; — but there are one or two other circum- 
stances which, though of a different nature from the 
foregoing story, are t#o characteristic of Buona- 



( 63 ) 

parte, and make too much figure in O'Meara's book, 
to be wholly overlooked. 

As soon as the determination of government ta 
bring down the expenses of Buonaparte's table to 
£8,000 a-year, — a sum which, by the way, that 
cruel tyrant, Sir Hudson Lowe, appears to have 
increased, oii his own authority^ to £12,000, — no 
sooner, in short, was ayiy restriciiori placed on the 
expenditure of the Emperor^ than he had recourse 
to every kind of device to excite pity, and make 
people think he was dying of hunger. He ordered 
some handsome plate to be broken up and sold 
publicly ; and the produce was applied, as O'Meara 
repeatedly informs us, to buy eggs, and butter, and 
vegetables, and other necessaries of life, which 
£12,000 a-year could not procure. 

ft is now well known— and proved by the admis- 
sions of hii and O'Meara's agent, already quoted in 
this article — that while Buonaparte was playing 
this wTetched game, and hawking his broken plate 
through the street of James Town, he had the coni- 
mand of millions — the economized plunder of his 
day of power : and such an oaf is O'Meara, that 
while he registers, with a great appearance of sym- 
pathy, each successive sale of the plate, he lets out 
several instances in which Buonaparte shows that 
he had money at will. Indeed he owned as much 
to O'Meara, adding, however, ' that he did not 
know where his funds were placed,' (vol. i. p. 182.) 
But this credible statement was made only a few- 
days after Buonaparte had, as we now find, settled 
pensions for life on three servants, Santini, Rous- 
seau, and Archambaud, who, in consequence of the 
reduction of the establishment, had been sent to 
Europe. But this is not all; — it is stated by O'Meara, 
that on the ve'ry day when a large portion of the 
plate was broken up, Las Cases had transferred a 



( 64 ) 

credit of £4,000 in London, to be applied, as Buo- 
naparte whininglj sajs, to the relief of his necessi- 
ties ; and Las Cases further tells us, that he had 
diamonds of Buonaparte's to the amount of £10,000 
about him. Again ; when Buonaparte wanted to 
make a grievance against the Governor, about a 
certain bust of young Napoleon, which an Italian 
sailor, in an India ship, had brought to St. Helena 
as a venture, he easily found, zvithout breaking up 
any plate, three hundred pounds to give for it ; and, 
as if to contradict in an especial manner his own 
assertion, this sum was paid by a draft, fApp, x.) 
which proves that he did know where his funds 
were placed. Again ; when Cipriani dies, Bertrand 
writes to Cardinal Fesch, and encloses a hill of ea> 
change for £345. 5s, \0d, being arrears of wages to 
be paid to his heirs, and adds, that ' the Emperor 
defers securing an independence to his children,' till 
he knows the detail of the circumstances in which 
ihey are left ; and yet Buonaparte is not ashamed 
to say^ 

^ Sir Hudson Lowe obliges me to sell my plate in order 
to purchase the necessaries of life, which he either de- 
nies altogether, or supplies in quantities so small as to be 
insufficient.'— vol. i. p. 153. 

So blind is the malice of the hero and the histo- 
rian, that Buonaparte's own mouth furnishes an ad- 
ditional and direct contradiction to this very state- 
ment ! Our readers will recollect, that Santini's 
Appeal was chiefly founded on this point, and that 
he echoed very loudly the foregoing statement of 
his master, namely, that he was in want of the ne- 
cessaries of life, such as eggs, butter, and milk, and 
WdiS forced to sell his plate to buy them. It happened, 
(not unfortunately for the honour of the country) 
that Lord Holland was credulous enough to believe 



( tss ; 

Santini, and to make that speech in the House of 
Lords which drew forth Lord Bathurst's triumphant 
reply. This answer of Lord Bathurst, and the 
* scurrilous strictures of the Quarterly Review,' 
operated a miracle, that neither his lordship nor 
we foresaw : — provisions grew suddenly cheap in 
St. Helena — ^the hens began to lay — the cows gave 
additional quantities of milk and butter — the neces- 
saries of life became abundant, and no more of the 
imperial plate was broken up to procure them : nay, 
Buonaparte became so as-hamed of his own senti- 
ments in Santini's mouth, that he said to O'Meara, 

^ Santini has published a brochure y«// of trash ; there 
are some truths in it, but every thing is exaggerated; 
there was always enough to exist upon, but not enough for 
a good table.' — vol. ii. p. 76. 

And again^ 

' Napoleon read a copy of Santini's pamphlet in Frenchj 
observing as he went through it, according as the passages 
seemed to deserve it, true, partly true, false, stuff,' &Cc 
— vol. ii. p. 93c 

Fie, General! is this the way you treat your 
firiends and advocates? As to your contradicting:. 
yourself we sa.y nothing, as you could not be aware 
that your surgeon — who had sworn to forget, the 
moment he left you, whatever you might say — 
would have hastened to his closet to write it down ^ 
and still less could you have suspected, that he 
would have exposed all your little foibles and in- 
consisirencies to the same ' scurrilous Quarterly 
Reviewers,.' under whose lash your imperial tem- 
per had already winced- 

In the same style, we find, towards the coiiciusion 
of O'Meara's book,, that the fabl*^ Oi starvation hav- 
ing failed, a new grievaiice wasin grogress ,; and a- 
Qkwnic hez)cUilisj or liver complaint, was in prepara*-- 

f.2. 



iiOjT], and the magnanimous sufferer had already ex- 
pressed his gracious intentions of being severely af- 
Bicted with that complaint. On the 3d of October, 
1817, O'Meara discovers the ''first symptoms of iht 
hepatitis,'^ as his index calls it.- — Now let us pause a 
moment, to see how he deals with this complaint. 
Nothing is so remarkable all through the preceding 
parts of the work, as the minute medical details 
which O'Meara introduces, and the importance he 
attaches to the most trifling indispositions ; a slight 
cholic is gravely registered from its appearance to 
its departure, with all the salts and broths and 
chicken water employed against so formidable an 
invader, (vol. i, pp. 114, 118, 120.) If the patient 
has a swelled gum, the progress of the alarming dis- 
ease, and the treatment by ' acescent food and an 
acid gargle,' is carefully noted, (i. 153, 164.) Has 
he toothache ? it is announced with suitable pomp : — 

* October 23, 1816.— Napoleon indisposed: one of his 
cheeks considerably tumefied, (Anglice, a swelled face.) 
Recommended fomentation, and steaming the part affect- 
ed ; recommended also the extraction of a canons tooth, 
Qnd renewed the advice I had given on many previous oc- 
casions, particularly relative to exercise, as soon as the re- 
duction of the swelling permitted it, also a continuance of 
dietj chiefly vegetable, with fruits.' — vol. i. p. 169- 

Some time after he gets a cold ^ the progress of 
this terrifying disease is recorded with equal anx- 
iety : — 

* Five o'clock p. m.— Napoleon sent for me ; found 
Mm sitting in a chair opposite the fire, (wonderful !) He 
had gone out to walk, and had been seized with rigors, 
(Anglice, shivering,) head-ache, severe cough ; examined 
his tonsils, which were swelled. Cheek inflamed. Had 
several rigors whilst I was present j pulse much quickened. 
Recommended warm fomentations to his cheek, a liniment 
to his throatj warm diluents, a gargarisro, pediluvium, 



( C7 ) 

(Anglice, bathing his feet,) and total abstinence. Sa'.^ 
him again at nine, in bed/ &€.— (vol. i. pp. 173— ISi, 
190,) 

and so on in a hundred other pkces. 

Our readers wonder what we mean by quoting all 
this stuff, which would not even interest an apothe- 
cary's boy; but they will agree, we think, with us, 
that all this bustle about colds, toothaches, and sore 
gums, leads to a most important conclusion ; for as 
soon as the chronic hepatitis — a fatal disease, as we 
shall see by and by-^appears, O'Meara throws 
away, at once, his medical dictionary, and having 
arrived at the only serious illness which his patient 
has had, he suddenly acquaints us that, — 

* As it is not the intention of the author to tire the 
reader with the detail of a medical journal, the eiiHincra- 
Hon of the symptoms will be for the luture discontinued, 
unless where absolutely necessary.' — vol. ii. p. 257. 

No doubt the medical journal of hepatitis would 
tire the reader, as the medical journal of cholic and 
cough had already done ; but the details of a hepa- 
titis which never existed might be a little ditlicult 
to manage. Some light will be thrown on tliis part 
of the subject by quoting a passage from a letter of 
Sir Hudson Lowe to Count Bertrand, dated April 
21, 1818, and which O'Meara or his friend publish- 
ed in the Morning Chronicle of the 24th of August 
of the same year. 

* Your letter states, that ^^ Napoleon Buonaparte has 
been sick these seven months of a chronic disease of the 
liver." To a question put to Mr. O'Meara on the 25th 
of March, one month ago, he replied, after a great deal 
of hesitation and unwillingness to name any specijic dis- 
order, saying, at first, a derangement of tlie biliary sys- 
tem, — that, " if called on to give it a name, iie should call 
it an ?flc//;ie;iMiepatitis5 and that even this might have 



( 68 ) 

Keen wholly avoided by taking exercise as he Hadrecom* 
mended." ' 

This doubtful testimony as to incipient hepatitis 
was given, as our readers will observCjj'ust six 
months after the recorded existence of the disease 
in its confirmed &tate ! O'Meara, however, was sooa 
relieved from any treatment of this chronic hepa- 
titis ; but immediately on his arrival in England^ 
the following paragraph appeared in a paper prints 
ed at Portsmouth, where he landed. 

^ Mr. O'Meara left Buonaparte in a very dangerous 
state of health— his complaint is a confirmed disease of the 
liver, which bis dull inactive life contributes most power- 
fully to increase — the liver is greatly enlarged, and dis* 
covers a tendency to give pain, which we understand is- 
$he next stage of the disorder towards suppuration and the 
destruction of life^' 

It was in July, 1818, that O'Meara lek his pa»- 
tient ' in the stage of the disorder next to the desiruc" 
Hon oflife^ yet it is not till liao years and a quarter 
after ^ in September, 1820,. that we find Count Ber^ 
trand beginning to make the expected use of the 
chronic hepatitis; he writes a pathetic letter io 
Lord Liverpool, to acquaint hi& lordship, ^ that the 
patient can no longer struggle against the malignity 
of the climate ; that all the time he remains in this 
abode will only be a state of painful agony ; that a 
RETURN to Europe is the on/y means by which hs 
can experience any relief. '- — vol. ii, p. 503o 

But while all these worthy persons were thus en^ 
deavouring to excite sympathy for a fictitious mala^ 
dy of the climate, a real hereditary disease made its 
appearance, and, after about six. months progress^ 
terminated fatally on the 5th of May,. 1821, The 
symptoms of this disease had, as we learn from the 
testimony of his medical attendant, naresemblaiica 
whatever to he£atitis5. 



( 69 ) 

' lOtJi April, 1821. — Buonaparte placed his iiand over 

* the liver, and said to me, le foie; upon wliicli, although 

* I had done it before, and given my opinion that there 
*' was no disease of the liver ; I again examined the right 

* hypochondriac region, and not fading any indication or 
^fulness whatever — (though O'iMeara had found symptoms 
' of suppuration three years before^ — and judging from 

* the symptoms in generalyl told him that T did not a|)pre- 
'■ hend that there was any disease of the liver ; that per- 
» haps there might be a little want of action in it.' — Ar- 
notVs Account of the last Illness of Napoleon Buonaparte ^ 
p. 9. 

On opening the body, it was found that the pa- 
tient had died of a disease v/hich is affected by no 
climate — a cancer, or schirrons state of the sto- 
mach ; and the report of five surgeons, who exa- 
mined the viscera, tesfiUoe that 

' with the exception of the adhesion occasioned by the dis* 
ease of the stomach, (of which he died,) ?io unhealthy ap-^ 
pearance presented itself in the li ver.' — Arnold Accowit^ 
p. 26. 

And Dr. Arnott further states, on Buonaparte^s own 
authority, that his father died of a similar com- 
plaint; and it has been reported, and never, that 
we know of, contradicted, that he had himself al- 
waj's been suspicious of some disease of this nature. 
If these facts be so, our readers will know what 
to think of Mr. O'Meara's chronic hepatitis of 1817, 
and of the prudent fear that just then seized him 
of ' tiring his readers with medical details.' "We 
do not mean to say that Buonaparte may not have 
been affected in 1017 by the first approaches of the 
complaint of which he died in 1821— that is a 
question which never can be decided ; but it is 
certain that he had no disease of the liver, no illness 
induced by the climate, and that O'Mcara's state- 
ments upon this point are just as true as the rest of 



( 70 ) 

book. We should not have approached this- 
subject at all, if duty had not obliged us. The 
thoughts of Buonaparte, reduced to that state to 
which we must ail come, subdues all feeling of per- 
sonal hostility ' We rejoice not,' to use the beau- 
tiful sentiment of Ecclesiasticus, ' over our great- 
est enemy being dead, but remember that we die: 
all.' Against his triumphal car, we raised our fee- 
ble efforts ; but we follow with different feelings 
his hearse ; and we should not, in an article writ- 
ten, as this is, with a strong spirit of hostility to^ 
wards the actions of a living man, have alluded to 
the last scene of his career, if Mr. O'Meara had. 
not, in his Appendix, inserted the letters which we 
have quoted, and suppressed the report of the per° 
sons who opened the body, clearly with no other 
■view than to give countenance to his own impos- 
ture of chronic hepatitis, and to eonfirm the false 
idea which his whole book inculcates — that the cli- 
mate of his inhospitable prison, and the conduct of 
his barbarous keepers, had prematurely terminated 
the life of Buonaparte. We, on the contrary, feel, 
=— and in this and in several preceding articles have, 
we hope, proved,- — that he was treated with as much 
respect as was due his station, and with as much 
indulgence as was consistent with his security ;— 
that the British nation, wJiose children he had for 
twenty years imprisoned and slaughtered, and whose 
general ruin he had, by force and fraud, invariably 
pursued, forgot the despot in the prisaner ; and re- 
membered, in their treatment of him, no more of 
his former power, than was necessary to guard 
against his resumption of it. 

To this we add our mature and solemn opinion, 
that, in accordance with this national generosity, 
those who had the painful responsibility of his cus- 
tody bore with exemplary patience and forbearance*; 



( -71 ■) 

tbe accumulated provocations with which he as- 
siduously insulted them; and never gave him or 
his partizans any cause for their complaints, except 
their judicious vigilance to prevent his escape, 
and their steady refusal to acknowledge hw irope- 
rial dignity. 



THE END- 



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